Broken Hearts on Canvas (ORIGINAL)
by ImmortalObsession
Summary: When a terrible turn of events lands Hermione Granger in an orphanage, nothing could possibly get worse. Or at least, nothing could get worse until Hermione meets Tom Riddle, the sulky handsome boy who likes to draw and thinks she's his newest toy...
1. Chapter 1

Part 1 – the Orphanage Ghoul

"_I am selfish. All artists are selfish and self-centered,"  
_\- Chaim Potok, _My Name is Asher Lev_

* * *

London, England  
1947- _present _

"Here you are, dearest." Mrs. Weasley smiles as she tucks two shillings into Hermione's small hand. "Put that in your pocket and make sure no one sees it. I don't want any of those crooks getting your pay. You've worked hard for it."

"Thank you, Mrs. Weasley. I won't let anyone near it." Hermione puts the shillings deep inside her satchel and waves goodbye to the Weasley family. All six of them are bundled in their homey flat two sizes too small just inside the threshold she now stands on. Five red-headed children shout out their returning goodbyes. Mr. Weasley, who is off in the factory where he works until the wee hours of morning and builds parts for ships, has already said his parting an hour past. Sweet Mrs. Weasley, rosy-cheeked and stern as a Mary Poppins, is hustling Hermione off firmly, warning her to get going before dark.

The door to the Weasley's flat snaps shut behind Hermione. Mrs. Weasley's delicious meal fills Hermione's stomach pleasantly and she sighs, turning on her heel and starting down the narrow, steep stairs to the first floor. She shouldn't say it but Mrs. Weasley is a far better cook than Mrs. Granger, Hermione's mother. Sometimes, she wishes that she was one of the Weasley children. They were always so cheery, as if they didn't have a care in the world... even as the world threatened to rip itself apart around them. The Weasleys always found a way to laugh at their sorrows. They were not concerned for the landowner threatening to throw them on the streets if they paid rent late once more. It was as if the Great Depression that had swept over all of England overnight, or the bombs and dead husbands and brothers and sons marching to Germany, hadn't touched them.

Hermione's family does not find it so easy to laugh in hard times.

_Still, things are getting better, _she reminds herself._ I'm making money. I can take care of us. _At this thought, an enormous sense of pride fills the small space in her body unoccupied by Mrs. Weasley's hearty supper, and she lifts her chin a little higher as she marches down the rainy street. Yes, _she_ is the supporter now. It is _her _who keeps her family running, who prevents the Grangers from slinking down into a slump impossible to dig out of, or worse, the London slums. It hadn't always been this way. Only last year, Hermione was a student at an all-girls charter school. She still had her uniform, which she kept tidily hung in a closet for when she could finally return to school after the war. She was the best in her class until her parents were forced to pull her out for work.

Destitution. Hermione learned the meaning of that word when Mum and Papa lost the family dentistry. Hermione had asked why the good people of London didn't want dentists anymore. Mum told her that people didn't have enough money to buy bread these days, much less enough to go to an expensive dentist to check on a crooked tooth. Papa said people didn't worry about cavities anymore; they worried about terrorists and Jews and Hitler.

When Mum and Papa couldn't find any new jobs, they enrolled for unemployment. The first check from the government, or _the dole _as Papa calls it, came days before the rent was due. It was enough to get by if they skipped a meal and no more. Mum cried that night. Papa cried too, outside their one-bedroom flat long after midnight when he thought they'd all gone to bed. But Hermione heard him sobbing through the thin wall of her bedroom.

Papa comes home late most of the time now. What exactly he does out and about in London, Hermione doesn't know. Mum would ask before, but Papa gets angry and yells at her when she does. Before the war, Hermione had never heard her Papa – her sweet, tactile Papa – raise his voice at anyone. Especially her mother.

"Mum, I'm back," she shouts, stepping into their flat. She dumps her satchel on the floor. Her skin is sticky with sweat and drizzle from the long walk over. She retrieves the two shillings and fists them, hiding both hands behind her back and creeping forward.

"Muuuummm." She listens for a response, but doesn't get any. "Mum! Where are you?"

"In here, baby" comes the tired reply. Mum's voice travels out of the bedroom they all share and Hermione moves toward it, past the four-foot wide kitchen, tiny bath, and the radio and armchair serving as their living room. Her incredible hair cast a wobbly shadow.

"Mum, look what I've got," Hermione says excitedly, unraveling her hands into the open. But her mother does not turn from where she half-bends out the window, smoking a cigarette. The woman's gaunt body, which has shrunk two sizes in the past year, looks skeletal from this angle.

"I made two shillings," she continues, not one to be discouraged easily. "I found a penny on the way here and bought us half a loaf of rye. It's in my satchel now-"

"Baby." Mum is crying. "Baby, baby."

Hermione stops babbling and frowns at the back of her mother's head, swathed in a cloud of toxic smoke and failed dreams. "Yeah?" she asks.

"Oh baby," her mother continues to murmur, sounding dizzy. She moans softly. "Baby, baby…"

Hermione chews her thumbnail, a bad habit no one has yet to reprimand her for, and eyes her mother. "Mum?"

At the familiar call, the gaunt woman finally turns around, tossing the finished cigarette out of the half-open window behind her and tugging down the Venetian blind. It only comes down partway and hangs at a crooked angle. Grey evening light slashes into the bedroom in strips. The other half of the room, the side her mother stands on, is plunged into murky darkness.

Something shiny glints in Mum's hand.

"Baby, please don't give me that look," she says, tightening her grip on the pliers and blinking back tears. "I don't want to do this – you know that – but we need the money."

Hermione stares at her.

"Come here, baby." She waves her over with hands once soft and ripe with flesh, that once tucked back frizzy wisps behind Hermione's ears and caught the chocolate ice cream dribbling down her chin when she ate too fast. They look like spiders with bones for legs now.

"Baby." Mum's brow furrows with confusion. Hermione always listens to her. She's a good daughter. Never disobedient. "Come on now."

"Where's Papa?" Hermione whispers.

Mum's expression closes. It shuts down, a shoe shop gone out of business; it darkens, a storm building up thunder; it shivers, just as glass does seconds before it shatters into a thousand itty bitty pieces. "Papa left," she says flatly.

"Left? For how long-?"

"I don't know." Her mother is agitated and tears at her hair with one hand, dangerously whipping around the pliers with the other. "Forever, I suppose. We haven't seen him in days, so he could be at the bottom of the Seine for all I know, couldn't he?"

Hermione begins to cry.

At the sight, Mum's face softens like warm bread dough. "Oh baby, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…" She sighs. "There's just not enough money. Not for everything we need. But if I could just-" She stops, then starts again. "Look, I'll make it quick. They're baby teeth, so they'll grow back. All I need is two molars. One is worth four pounds, you know. That could get us food for a few weeks, and then the other could pay for Mummy's special sugar. You know how much I love my special sugar, baby…"

Hermione's stiff with fear and her tears stop running now. She stands frozen while the shell of her mother croons and tries to calm her, her bony spider hands shaking from withdrawal and brown eyes eerily vacant. Hermione knows what she has to do then.

Mum knows too, a mere second before she does it.

"Don't you run, Hermione Jean Granger," she warns, lifting the pliers and coming forward slowly. Hermione tenses. "Don't you dare-"

"_Hermione!"_

The scream chases her out the flat, overwhelming the sound of the two shillings Hermione left on the bedroom floor, of the pliers sticking headfirst into the plaster wall exactly where her head was a second ago, of her footsteps rushing and tripping and fumbling down the stairs, of her falling down the last flight and ripping open a gash on her palm when it caught on a loose nail.

It chases her all the way to the inner city, where she finally stops running and catches her breath on the edge of an alley, gasping. She looks up at the sky through a messy explosion of matted brown hair.

It's jet-black.

London is a dangerous place at night, Hermione knows, and it doesn't help any that she's bleeding. She'll be helpless if one of those disturbed gents she's heard about tries to snatch her, and it gets real cold after eight o' clock in the fall. She needs somewhere to go. She needs help. She needs-

She needs Mum.

And she's crying again, in the way that only a child can cry. She cries with wild abandon and no care for anyone or anything else, with absolute misery, with gasps for air and hiccups when she eats up her tears and a huge wail just when she almost stops, burying her face in her sleeves and snotting all over them.

Just then, from a nearby café emerges a retired policeman by the name of Moody. His beer belly is warm with drink, his mind sharp and vigilant as ever. The sound of crying startles him and he looks around, his eyes – or should we say, one good eye – landing on a little girl with terrible hair crouched in an alleyway. He scowls and marches over.

"What are you doing out here alone, eh?" a gruff voice demands, startling Hermione out of the depths of self-pity and enticing her to look up. Her eyes goes wide.

The man before her is large and portly, with a jagged scar webbing across his cheek, scruffy blondish hair, a bowler hat, and a most intriguing glass eye. He wears a black trench coat as well and, rather interestingly, the jacket would have looked extremely suspicious on any other person, but it only made this particular man seem imposing and curiously mysterious.

"Well?" the man barks. "What are you doing out here? It's past curfew for you, innit?"

"I…I'm alone," she finally says. "I haven't got anywhere to go."

"No? Well, what about your parents?" the man says shrewdly.

"Haven't got any." Hermione doesn't usually lie, but she knows that if she tells the man about her mother he'll take her back no matter how hard she pleads otherwise, and she can't go back home. She remembers the pliers with a shudder.

"Well damn." The man sets his hands on his hips and growls in thought, looking around and scowling some more. "Well then, maybe you can go to…nah, can't do that…what about…? No, no, he moved out to Tyneside…and then there's…meh, perhaps not…maybe…_maybe…_Nah…never, not in a million years…well, there _is _that one…meh… Blast." He smacks his meaty hands together, matter-of-factly. "Yep, that oughta do it."

"What oughta do what?" Hermione inquires. Curiosity invested in the man's strange way of talking makes her forget her earlier troubles.

"Mrs. Cole oughta take you in, little missy, that's what oughta what," the man says sharply. "Now stand up, we've got places to go – well, one place anyway – and that woman owes me a favor. Yep, she'll take you in. Sure. No problem. That oughta do it." He starts to stride off, limping slightly due to what Hermione now notices is a right wooden leg. She hurries after him.

"Who is 'Mrs. Cole'?" she says, after they even their pace and cross the busy street. The man growls in annoyance.

"Mrs. Cole," he grumbles. "She is going to be your matron. She runs one of the orphanages here. It's a fine place, and you'll be lucky should she take you in."

Hermione nods, although she is taken off guard by this new bit of information. _Orphanage? _she thinks and hesitates in the middle of the crossing, without the man in the bowler hat noticing at all. She stares after his flapping black trench coat, ignoring the honks of cabs and their angry drivers screeching at her. She wonders if she should run now, back to her mother. Before it's too late.

_It's been too late for months now, _the voice of reason reminds her. _Papa isn't ever coming back and Mum's been gone for a long, long time. Where else can you go?_

The man in the bowler hat, who has seemed to finally realize she isn't following, turns back. "Hey! You coming or not, eh?"

"Coming." The answer is immediate, said in a whisper too quiet to hear in the city. Louder, she says, "Coming!" And then she sprints to catch up.

* * *

**AN: Hello! You're probably confused as to why there are _two _versions of BHoC now. This is the ORIGINAL BHoC before any of the edits or changes. I decided to put up the original because so many of you requested it and I just happened to find it after all this time. (Also I have no idea when I will be able to finish the newest version.) I will post a chapter every day or two as quickly as possible. Thank you to everyone who has put up with me all these years and stuck by BHoC. **

**~ImmortalObsession **


	2. Chapter 2

Hermione's first morning at the orphanage is not pleasant.

When she wakes up in her own bed (which is shabby, but very clean, much like the rest of the orphanage) and looks around to see a grey, sad-looking room, she is bewildered. What is she doing here? Where _is _here? Is her mother looking for her? Then she's petrified. _Something's happened. Something really, truly terrible happened, didn't it?_

Suddenly, that sticky cobweb of sleep and dreaming slithers away from her mind. Everything becomes clear. Hermione remembers the pliers and running away, the strange policeman with the funny leg and walking with him through towering iron gates at midnight. Her mother must be furious with her for running. But she can't go back to her now, can she? And Papa vanished a long time ago...

She is alone now.

The man in the bowler hat, Moody, had brought her here. When they arrived at the orphanage late at night, a middle-aged woman named Mrs. Cole had fondly called him by this strange name. She had appeared at the gate in her bedraggled nightgown and frowned at the sight of them; a policeman and street urchin drenched with rain and mud. Before Hermione was allowed to come inside, Mrs. Cole made her remove her filthy shoes and throw them away in the street. They would give her new shoes at the orphanage, Mrs. Cole had said. Well, Hermione came to find the shoes were not new at all. They were used and a size too small on her right foot besides, but they were new to _her_, which must be what Mrs. Cole had meant.

Hermione's bedroom is tiny and narrow, but it feels enormous to her without anyone else there to fill it. She buries her face in the thin, limp pillow under her and bawls until the sun rises.

Later on, Mrs. Cole finds her like this. Hermione is afraid for a moment that she will punish her for making such a ruckus in the morning, but a look of understanding comes over the woman's face. She sits on the foot of the bed and soothes Hermione, coaxing her to go down to the eating hall and meet the other children. "It isn't all bad, dear," she says to her back, which is quivering with sobs. "You'll see. I promise." She explains that Hermione can make friends here and maybe even find a new home, with loving parents and a dog or two. _I don't want new parents and I hate dogs, _Hermione thinks, but somehow she is calmed by the matron's words suddenly. She sits up, wiping the tears from her face with the drab sleeve of the grey nightgown - also used - that a helper had given her the night before.

After Hermione changes into 'uniform,' she follows Mrs. Cole into a spotless but obviously ancient hallway. The tile floors are black and white, and the few children up at this hour fulfill their morning duties. Scrubbing corners and stairs, Hermione swerves to avoid the soapy sponge here and tin bucket there. Mrs. Cole nods approvingly and makes corrections as they pass the children, who stare curiously after them and laugh when they see Hermione. She is suddenly aware of her bushy hair, larger and frizzier than usual from the rain yesterday. She turns red and avoids meeting anyone's eyes.

_I don't think I'll like it here very much, _she thinks glumly. The rest of the orphanage is as grey and washed out as her uniform and shoes, scrubbed to dull perfection. There is mismatching furniture in many of the rooms and Mrs. Cole keeps up a comforting stream of blabber as they make their way to the eating hall. Hermione's attention is only distracted from the macabre setting of her new home by a few choice words, like _not many toys _and _there's __a lovely little beach we go to once a year. Oh, you'll love it, dear, it's easy to learn how to swim – _and especially, _the library._

"Library?" she says, straightening. "You have a library?"

"Oh, in a manner of speaking." Mrs. Cole shrugs modestly. "It's more of a relaxing room, really. It's got a few comfy chairs and some picture books there. You like to read, dear?"

Hermione nods. She would have to investigate this so-called library later.

"Here we are," Mrs. Cole says, stopping them inside the eating hall. The hall is actually a large, dark square room with the only light entering from two barred windows on each side of the back wall. About six or so long tables are jam-packed with children varying in all ages. Hermione watches a helper in a white apron spoon a greyish gook onto a little girl's plate. She grimaces. Is _everything _grey in this place?

"You'll fit in just fine," Mrs. Cole assures her, patting Hermione firmly on the head and rattling her teeth. The matron nudges her forward. "Go on, take a plate and pick a seat. Mind your manners." She sticks the whistle hanging from her neck between her yellow teeth and walks back the way they came, folding her hands behind her back like a drill sergeant. The helper spooning gook hurries to her side. When the doors swing shut behind them, Hermione turns toward the other children with an audible gulp. They aren't staring at her like they had this morning, which is a relief. She would prefer to be invisible than picked on.

Hermione looks at a girl with reddish skin and mousy blonde hair. The children around her start laughing now that Mrs. Cole has disappeared. They seem happy, but there is an underlying glumness to the sound of shouts and wild screams. No matter how clean the orphanage they live in is, Hermione thinks, it is still a rather glum place to grow up.

She bites the nail of her thumb, contemplating, and eventually wanders over to the table with the girl. Its inhabitants notice her immediately.

"Who're you?" says one boy, sizing her up with cold blue-grey eyes. Those eyes widen at the sight of her hair.

"I'm Hermione," she says, trying for a smile. "What's your name?"

The boy sneers at her. "Your hair looks like the wrong end of a broomstick, Hermy." He grins nastily and his friends guffaw at her, throwing bits of gook at her hair to see if it sticks. Hermione gasps in outrage and quickly stands again, grabbing her plate and moving further down the table to sit by the girl with mousy hair. The boys laugh harder. "Coward!" they shout.

The blonde girl looks up, glances at Hermione (and her horrendous hair, naturally), and she finally looks at the snickering dolts. She sighs. "You're new?" she asks.

Hermione nods meekly. "Yes. I'm Hermione Granger."

"I've neva heard o' that name before."

"What's your name?" she says, trying to be nice.

"Martha." Martha shoots another distasteful look at the boys down the table, muttering under her breath. "Those rats are Billy Stubbs, Eric Whalley, Sean O'Sullivan, and Peter Kowsakowski."

"They're not very kind," Hermione says, catching Martha's tone. "Are you friends with them?"

"Not for a thousand shillings!" Martha scoffs. "They're harmless really, but not a good lot to fall in with. Too stupid." Her eyes narrow into slits and she looks around Hermione, at something behind her. "You want to know who you should really stay away from...?" she asks, dropping her voice. Hermione nods. Martha puts her mouth - sticky with gook - to Hermione's ear. She breathes in a hot voice, _"Tom Riddle."_

"Who?" Hermione turns around, craning her neck like an ostrich to see who Martha is glaring so intensely at. Martha wrenches her back around by the arm. Hard.

"Do you have dung for brains!" she demands. Hermione frowns. "No, that's impossible," she says stiffly. Martha rolls her eyes at her.

"Look again, but don't be so _obvious,_" she says lowly. "He's wearing the grey sweater."

"Everyone is wearing a grey sweater."

"He has black hair and creepy-looking eyes."

Hermione nods. "Okay." Carefully, she looks over her shoulder, as if stretching her back, and peers at the faces behind them until her head feels like it's going to pop off her neck. With a sigh, Martha turns her in the opposite direction, sticking out her finger in emphasis.

"What are you, blind? _He's right there_."

"I'm not blind-" Hermione starts to say waspishly, but her retort falls short at the sight of an extremely handsome boy sitting across the room, at his very own table with a finished plate of food and a napkin neatly spread across his lap. His eyes are downcast as he picks apart his gook with a knife and fork, never eating it. She can't tell if they are indeed creepy from this distance.

"That's him," Martha says, satisfied.

Hermione nods, but she barely hears her. Why is the boy all alone? she wonders. He looks so serious... It's almost as if he is an adult except that he looks no older than the rest of them. Suddenly, he pulls out a notebook and sets it on the table, scribbling intensely. Whatever he's up to seems to be very important.

"What's he doing?" Hermione asks out loud. Martha peeks back at Tom Riddle one last time and turns them both firmly around until they are no longer facing him.

"I think he's making up spells or some evil," Martha says conspiratorially. "He's a witch of some sort."

"I don't believe in that poppycock." Biting her nail, Hermione turns toward the gook on her plate. It seems to shiver when she looks at it. "How old is he?"

"Ten." Martha takes a chomp of a greasy bacon strip. Hermione notes that Tom Riddle is one year her senior. "He's lived in the orphanage his whole life. He was born here, which is very odd." She reveals this in an ominous and knowing way, as if telling a well-known ghost story that never fails to induce goosebumps and spooked shudders no matter how many times it's been told.

"So what's the big deal?" Hermione says, pressing. "He doesn't seem creepy to me."

Martha snorts. "You don't know Riddle. No one likes him and he has no friends and he doesn't want none either. Listen-" She sweeps a glance around them, one that surprises Hermione. The look in and of itself is full of... fear. "He's a little funny in the head except Mrs. Cole said no one ever dropped him as a baby. He's scary."

"Scary, how?"

"I'd rather not say." Martha fidgets. Swats at a scavenging fly. "He makes bad things happen, so we just leave him alone. He likes to be alone anyway."

Hermione frowns. Who would like being alone? She hates being alone. Then there's no one to tell all the facts she knows to, to ask questions, to read with or laugh with or smile at…

She finds herself thinking of Mum and Papa. The thought of her parents puts her in a glum mood and she forgets about Tom Riddle for the rest of breakfast.

* * *

It is seven-thirty at night when Hermione can finally go to the library.

She had been very busy today, spending most of her time with Mrs. Cole and touring the orphanage some more. The matron told her about the orphanage's practices, weekly trips to the chapel for worship, and all the rules. There were so many rules. Mrs. Cole said she was to get a chores list soon, but that it could wait until she settled in some more. Hermione didn't mind. She is used to cleaning by now. What would the Weasleys do without her now? she wonders.

Hermione holds her breath and slowly pushes open the door to the library, groaning under her touch. Peeking her head inside, she is severely disappointed.

Mrs. Cole was not being so modest after all.

The library is nothing more than a tiny room, much like all the other boring grey rooms of the orphanage. A few rows of half-empty bookshelves and a raggedy, outdated armchair greets her. It is nothing like the beautiful library from her old charter school. That was bigger than the eating hall and filled with more books than England had castles.

_Still, it's better than nothing, _she reminds herself.

With this uplifting (sort of) thought in mind, Hermione dives into the shelves.

About twenty minutes later, the-creaky-old-timer door gives a groan, and Hermione nearly drops _Great Expectations _in her fright. She catches it barely though and darts behind the very end of the row into hiding. Squinting over the top of the book cover, through yellowing pages and squelched eyelashes, she sees a boy walk inside her newfound safe haven.

Looking closer, she sees the boy is no less than the orphanage's personal ghoul.

It's Tom Riddle.


	3. Chapter 3

_London, England_  
_1936_

Tom Riddle, as it turns out, isn't in the library for books.

Knowing fully well that she is spying, Hermione doesn't dare make a sound while the strange boy gets comfortable. He sits down in a lumpy blue armchair, taking out a notebook from under his arm (she sees now that the notebook is actually a sketchbook), and digging around in the pockets of the customary grey tunic all the children wear. The same tunic she wears now, she reminds herself.

Tom Riddle takes out three pencils and a pencil sharpener.

Laying them down carefully on the low, pock-marked coffee table before him, he selects one and looks around the room. He's searching for something, although she doesn't know what – and after a minute, he lumbers up to hover in front of her. Hermione stiffens. She clutches her knees to her chest, trying to shrink where she hides behind the bookshelf, but her feet are prickling with invisible needles from the lack of blood flow for two hours. To her relief, the boy never looks down. He selects a book seemingly at random. Dropping it on the table hard enough to make Hermione wince with pity for the book, Tom Riddle sits again and puts a pencil to his sketchbook. Remembering what that girl Martha said about spells and witches, Hermione half-expects the boy to start hissing like a snake or something. But he does nothing of the sort. He only... draws the book.

For two hours.

Hermione stays with Tom Riddle the entire time. She can't very well walk out now without giving herself away. Better to keep hiding and cramping behind the bookshelf, she thinks to herself, on the chance that Tom Riddle truly is a wizard. She worms down to the floor into a semi-comfortable sprawl. Opening _Great Expectations, _Hermione loses herself in Dickens until she completely forgets the stinging in her numb feet and the sound of Tom Riddle's pencil scratching the likeness of a book. Midway through the enormous book, she glances up to find Tom Riddle is still drawing. He hasn't moved except to sharpen the pencil from time to time with a butter knife he must have nicked from the eating hall. She catches him chewing on his eraser when in deep thought. He makes a funny face, as if the taste of rubber and lead is like to poison, but he doesn't take his mouth off the grubby eraser even so. Hermione wants to ask him why on earth he chews on those dirty things, but he might hex her and Martha did say he was scary, so she keeps quiet.

She wants to see his picture, too.

Hermione closes _Great Expectations, _decided, and hops out of the dusty stacks.

"Hello!" she says, lifting her chin and embracing the full enormousness of her hair by striking what she hopes is an impressive pose. Hopefully, it will scare the ghoul Tom Riddle.

At the interruption, Tom Riddle's head snaps up and he jumps like a cat, nearly ripping a line of lead straight across his drawing. He just barely catches the pencil at the last moment, sending a dark glare sent her way.

He's definitely not scared.

Then he says the same thing everyone else had – except slightly differently:

"Who're _you_?"

The difference between _him _and _them, _Hermione reflects, is that there is a sharp command in this boy's voice, one that cannot be reckoned with and makes her lose the faux bravery she's mustered in mere seconds. She flushes. "I'm… I'm Hermione Granger," she says, with less certainty than before.

He sneers at her. "Go away, Hermione Granger." He says her name as though it is a curse. Huddling into the armchair like a crab into its hole, Tom Riddle continues to draw as if she isn't there. His eyes snap intently between the book and his sketchbook – and then her, too, when she doesn't budge.

"I said go away," Tom Riddle hisses at her. "I don't want you here."

Hermione frowns. _Nobody else wants me here either, so it seems, _she thinks hopelessly, remembering the boys from breakfast who threw gook at her hair. It had taken an hour to brush out.

Tom Riddle looks unmoved by the tears in her eyes. "Would you get out already? You're breaking my concentration."

"Concentration?" Hermione repeats doubtfully. "Concentration of what?"

"My drawing," he replies, through gritted teeth.

"Oh, can I see then?"

_Please, please let me see._

"No."

She is silent for a moment. Finally, she says, "I can see why no one likes you."

Tom Riddle glares at her balefully.

"What? I'm only telling you the truth." She tucks her Dickens' novel under her arm, the way he did with that sketchbook, and she goes to him, looping around the back of the armchair and valiantly sneaking a peek at Tom Riddle's picture before he can throw his scrawny arms over it.

"That's not fair!" he yells, while she smiles hugely in a smug, victorious way. "It's not finished, you idiot."

"I'm not an idiot. It's quite good though," she says. The drawing – or what she's seen of it in the short two seconds it passed her eyes – is… astonishingly _precise._ Precise down to the root-like fractures in the book's cracked spine. "Do you like drawing?" she asks.

"...Yes." Tom Riddle stares at her warily, as if he is loathe to part with this information. He seems to debate with himself. "You really think it's good?" he says seriously.

She shrugs. "Well, yes."

Tom Riddle smirks. He seems to see her in a new light suddenly, eyeing her up and down. Hermione hopes he doesn't comment on her hair. Her mother would normally braid it for her to subdue the frizz, but Hermione doesn't know how to braid and Mrs. Cole doesn't seem like the mothering sort. Hermione gasps when Tom Riddle's mouth curls upward, in the faintest impression of a smile. It is startling, that minuscule change in his pale, sullen features makes him look suddenly cherubic. She has never found any boy anything but disgusting or annoying before, but it occurs to Hermione that this boy is handsome. She is unsettled by the realization.

"I've never seen you here before," Tom says, snapping her out of her thoughts. He is chewing the eraser again. "You're new?"

"Yes." Hermione deflates a little at the reminder. "I've just arrived."

Tom nods to himself and stands, putting his measly art supplies back in his pockets and leaving the mess of curly pencil shavings on the table for someone else to clean. He wedges his sketchbook under his arm and sticks his other hand toward her.

"I'm Tom Riddle," he says, twitching a little at _Tom, _but otherwise pleasantly waiting for her to shake him.

Hermione beams. _I knew Martha was wrong about him, _she thinks, although this isn't really very true, and clasps his hand. A strange look comes over his face when she does. "I'm Hermione," she repeats.

"You've said that." Tom frowns. He stares at her hand, as if it is a bizarre artifact he has never seen before, and his eyes - so dark they are nearly black, not like midnight or the black of factory smoke rippling in the London sky, but as in the darkness of a windowless room at night; it is a vacuum of light that sucks the breath out of her - they slowly lift to hers, pausing on her smile. Martha's warning words come rushing back to her suddenly: _He's a little funny in the head... He's scary. _

Her smile falters and falls away completely, until Tom is just staring at her and she is nervously staring at his nose so she doesn't have to really look back. She would bite her nails if he wasn't still holding onto her hand. Finally, he breaks the long silence.

"I don't know you, do I?" he says, and he twirls his long, cold fingers through hers, tightening them like shoelaces. A boy is holding her hand. A _strange _boy, at that. Hermione is not certain if she should pull away or let him hold her.

"I... I don't think so. This is my first day." It sounds like a question.

"Oh." Tom frowns. "I just thought maybe that…" he trails off, then shakes himself. "Well, I'll take you back to your room, Hermione." He smiles in a shockingly charming way. Hermione finds herself blushing without knowing why. "And I can save you a seat in the eating hall, so you don't have to sit with those heathens," he says. "We'll have breakfast together."

"Oh er... Excellent. Thank you." She's both pleased to have made a friend and frightened by Tom's forwardness. "I think I'm on the second floor."

"Third," Tom says automatically. "Boys sleep on the second floor."

She turns read. "Oh. Of course."

Tom stares at her for another moment, then increases the strength of his hold on her hand in a way that makes Hermione blush again. He leads them out of the library.

They hold hands long after that.

* * *

Mrs. Cole, whose concern has always been highly preoccupied by one isolated charge of hers in particular, finds herself highly relieved. For in the duration of the past month, Tom Riddle – that one particularly worrying charge – has seemed to have undergone a great change of some sort, and it is all thanks to the very sweet girl Hermione Granger.

Tom has been glued to the girl's side since she first arrived at the orphanage six weeks ago, and he always plays the part of her perfect gentleman. He helps her make a plate at meals and puts napkins on her lap. He sits next to her in the chapel on Sundays and shares his copy of the Bible with her. He walks her to her room (and well, everywhere), and whenever the two are seen, they're holding hands and whispering to each other. The whispering worries Mrs. Cole, but she is sure the little pair will eventually grow out of it.

The truth of this dynamic is a bit different, however.

"Tom, where are we going?" Hermione asks, as Tom drags them away from the assembling children and back upstairs. She recognizes the route quickly and realizes they're headed toward Mrs. Cole's office. "Tom! We're going to miss the orientation-"

"No, we're not," he says, in his usual self-assured way. Tom never has a worry in the world. "Only you are."

"Why?" she says, bewildered, but has to wait for an answer when they grind to a halt.

In front of the boiler room.

"Because you're going to wait for me in here," Tom explains in a secretive, excited whisper that clearly indicates he's been thinking over this plan for quite some time. "I'll go downstairs with everyone else and while the parents are here looking, you can hide up here."

"But I don't want to hide," she says.

Tom's smile falters, quickly transforming into a heavy scowl. Hermione steps back at the arrival of his temper, which she's speedily learned is shorter than a burnt fuse, but Tom won't let go of her hand.

He never lets go.

"Well, you're going to," he says, furiously. "I planned all this out. You can't just not do it-"

"Of course I can," retorts Hermione hotly. "Besides, I want to meet the parents."

He stares at her.

"What?" she says. She's nervous.

"You…" He closes his eyes, pausing. Then his dark eyes slowly open and bore into hers. Hermione tries to look away, but somehow can't – Tom Riddle's eyes have an uncanny way of never letting her go. _Magic, _a part of her whispers, but her brain knows those things don't exist. Tom is simply magnetic when he widens his eyes like that, like he's a beatific angel dropped straight out of heaven.

Or a pretty-eyed demon from hell.

"You actually _want _one of those rich snobs to adopt you, Hermione?" he whispers incredulously.

"They're not snobs."

"Sure they're not. They just all think they're better than us and come here to get our hopes up, to laugh at us because we haven't got any family or money, and then leave."

"But…but I thought they might want some of us," Hermione says in a small voice, hurt and astonished.

"That's what all the new kids think." Tom's eyes soften at her disappointment and he squeezes her hand, reassuringly. "I'm the only friend you've got, Hermione, remember? And since I've been here so long, I know how these things go. Trust me," he says. "You don't want to go down there."

She bites her lip – he'd told her the third day they started being friends that when she bit her nails it irritated him, so this was the new and improved version of the habit – and nods slowly. "Alright. I… I'll stay up here, I guess?"

"Great." He kisses her on the cheek, opens the door to the boiler room up, and shoves her inside. It's dark and cramped. Musty-smelling. "I'll be back in a few hours," he promises, and shuts the door and locks it from the outside.

Hermione shivers. It's scary in here and there aren't any light switches. She sits down on the chilly floor, leans back against the boiler, and tries not to think about the ominous wails coming from the pipes for the next two and a half hours.

She hopes Tom comes back soon.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1947 – present_

"Errrmeeahne, get ze new orde_rrr_ of bonnets pour Miss Black!"

Hermione looks up from her sandwich with a long-suffering sigh. This is supposed to be her lunch break. Not pretend-to-be-Madame-Pomfrey's-lapdog-while-being- paid-minimum-wage break.

"_ERRRMEEAHNE!"_

Or maybe it is pretend-to-be-Madame-Pomfrey's-lapdog-while-being- paid-minimum-wage break? Hermione jumps up, crams the rest of her ham-and-cheese in her mouth, ties on a stylishly-cut apron, and jets out of the backroom. The sleek seamstress shop she walks into is a myriad of feather boas, thread spools, and snobby older women dressed like teenagers. She offers polite, helpful smiles and shimmies through the clothes racks, to the other side of the store where the storage closet is.

She hates the storage closet.

It's cold, stuffy, and dark even when she turns on the overhanging light. She despises all closets. They remind her too much of…_him._

Hermione shakes off chills, steps inside the dim space, and grabs a cardboard box off the highest shelves. She's back outside in the comforting busyness of the shop in seconds. She locks the door with a smart click of keys, heaves the incredibly heavy box of fancy hats onto her hip, and doubles speed when Madame Pomfrey screeches for her again. She hates closets.

She hates her job even more.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1936_

Tom draws everything.

Hermione likes to watch him draw. It's quite a gift, she thinks, to be able to create something out of nothing, and Tom's skill never fails to amaze.

But Tom is arrogant.

Although he hides this trait from everyone else but her, you can see his swollen ego if you just look for it. For instance, Tom always smirks when she oohs and awes at his pictures, straightening up a little like the gents they see walking around London when they go to chapel for Sunday service. He soaks up her compliments like a sponge. He knows exactly how lovely he is and how to use his angel eyes to get his way.

And he uses his angel eyes often.

After a while though, Hermione grows accustomed to Tom's talent and simply sits next to him reading while he draws into his sketchbook. He has about twenty-one of them in his room, hidden in his wardrobe under a flappy board. He won't tell her how he got the sketchbooks, but they're always brand-new in the beginning.

He lets her look through all of them. But only when he's finished.

That day, Mrs. Cole takes the children to the park for a healthy spot of fresh air. Tom draws the fountain and the trees and a sister and brother having a picnic and an old woman crying on the bench nearby. His pictures look like photographs. He still makes a displeased face when he chews the end of his pencil.

Hermione trails her fingers through the fountain water from where they sit on the stone ledge. She's already finished her book, but Tom is still drawing.

The onyx bottom of the fountain is covered in a shiny, rippling sheet of pennies and fat goldfish that blink at her blearily. Billy, Eric, Sean, and Peter are scooping the dripping wishes into their pockets while Mrs. Cole's head is turned.

Hermione shakes her head, turning away, and twists over to get a peek at Tom's newest sketch – but instead, she plops right into the fountain with a grand _SPLASH!_

Tom whips around, stunned to see her floundering and sputtering in the water, and Billy Stubbs and his cronies laugh themselves silly at the sight of Broomhead Hermione Granger bottom-down in the fountain. Shocked, amused giggles from other spectators add to Hermione's humiliation when she stands up and the back of her soppy grey skirt is wet _just so _it looks like she's had an… an accident.

Even Tom cracks a smile.

Quickly, Hermione grabs the stone boot of the heroic-looking gentleman centered in the fountain and uses it to haul herself out, stumbling and quivering with suppressed tears. She stubs her toe on the siding as she takes off running, leaving puddles and wet footprints in her tracks. Laughter follows her and Mrs. Cole gives a gasp of surprise when she sees Hermione rip past, with such speed that the brim of the matron's sunhat starts in a flutter.

Hermione finally arrives in the safety of a meadow. She collapses against a weeping willow, hiding her face in her knees and sobbing. She hates the boys for laughing at her. And Tom! How could he think it was_ funny_? She thought he was supposed to be her friend, to be on her side, to help her out of the fountain or… or… or _something_.

"Hermione?" the boy himself shouts out, from somewhere far away.

Hermione doesn't want Tom to find her. She hides her face in her uniform's grey sweater sleeves and huddles up at the base of the willow tree, sniffling.

The sounds of footsteps refill her with dread all over again.

Tom always finds her.

"Hermione?" he stage-whispers, still chuckling, and creeps over when he spots her. She hears the grass crunch under his feet. "What's wrong?" Tom says, tugging one of the hands free from where they clench her elbows and twisting it with his. He puts his chin on her knee when she doesn't say anything and she peeks a glance at him, but then regrets it immediately.

He has his angel eyes on.

"What is it?" he says, tracing the frown on her mouth with a curious finger – as if he's trying to draw the multiple contours on her lips by pure touch. "Tell me, Hermione." The command in his voice is so effective she starts to answer without meaning to.

"You all laughed at me," she mumbles, pulling her face away from Tom's hand and scowling. Tom immediately slips his nimble body through the two tree roots she sits between, slumping down against the tree trunk and putting his fingers back on her face. She's so mad his touch feels like boiling-hot oil.

"Why didn't you help me get out?" she demands. "And would you quit doing that?"

"I didn't laugh," Tom says in his quiet, serious tenor. "And I'm mad too, you know. They shouldn't have laughed at you."

She tears up some blades of grass viciously.

"I promise I'll make them pay." His hand drops from her face to crumble up a dead leaf sitting by them, squashing it and opening his palm to reveal papery crumbs he pours over her grassy shrine. "Billy and Eric and all the rest of those dolts."

Hermione bites the inside of her lip. She doesn't like the way Tom says _I'll make them pay. _It makes her nervous. "I don't want to get anyone in trouble," she says warily.

Tom shrugs. "I'm going to do it anyway."

A knot of squeamishness coils in Hermione's belly and she looks at Tom, worried. He's smiling though. He's smiling a smile that reminds her immediately of Peter Pan, of a faery boy who does nothing but make mischief and play with pirate swords.

Tom is nothing like Peter Pan though.

They're in chapel, wearing their Sunday-best, when it happens.

Hermione is following Reverend Richard's sermon obediently, reading along to the lines of the Bible and voicing them when Reverend Richard bids them to. Tom sits beside her, as he always does, holding the open holy book between them in one hand and holding her knee with the other. His eyes aren't on the holy text though, where they usually go so he can pretend to read with everyone else and mouth the verses.

No, they're watching Billy Stubbs today.

Hermione only turns away from the reading when Tom's hand unconsciously tightens on her leg, distracting her. She looks up at him, about to ask what it is he wants, but stops when she sees he's watching someone. She looks over to see who.

She bites her lip, because she remembers Tom's promise to… _to make them pay._

Billy Stubbs, Eric Whalley, Sean O'Sullivan, and Peter Kowsakowski open their Bibles one by one. Each of their faces go white as sheets when they see what has been placed inside just for them. Tom's face goes twisty with something Hermione can't find a name for.

The bullying boys have been given their own circles of hell.

Eric Whalley, who unfolds a square piece of paper, finds an intricately-drawn picture of himself in the third circle, dripping blood and being ripped limb from limb by Cerberus the three-headed dog. It is illustrated down to the very last minute detail, to a string of Eric's goopy flesh dribbling from the beast's slobbering jaws. It's terrifying.

Next is Sean O'Sullivan, in the fifth circle, half-drowning in a lake of mud. Choking on the soupy dirt. He's surrounded by rabid sinners, tearing at each other and naked.

Peter Kowsakowski lies in a flaming tomb, while screeching Furies lash whips at his skin and have their serpentine hair sink fangs into him. The spraying blood is eerily accurate.

And Billy Stubbs, the leader of the crew, lies in the very last circle. He has been given demon wings, which catch and flex in a phantom wind, and his body is forever frozen in a vast lake of ice. He has three heads, swollen and grotesque, crying and contorted painfully. Each head has another head gripped in its mouth, squashed between long sharp teeth and screaming. They are the heads of Eric Whalley, Sean O'Sullivan, and Peter Kowsakowski.

This last piece is utterly disturbing.

It's even more incredible.

Hermione stares on at the drawings in horrified amazement, recognizing the scenes from Dante's _Inferno _with a burt of nausea.

Tom recognizes the fear in Billy Stubbs's eyes when the boy crumples up the horribly beautiful drawing, shoves it in his pocket, and sees him staring. Billy looks away hastily.

Tom sits back, satisfied, and mouths the words to the verses.

Hermione has never been so sick in all her life.

She closes her eyes, moaning softly when the doctor Mrs. Cole has called over replaces the thermometer he's put under her tongue with a cool washcloth on the forehead.

"She has a temperature of 105 degrees and a slight stomach bug," she hears him tell Mrs. Cole, who makes a noise of concern through the blurry fuzz in Hermione's ears. "Give her these antibiotics and wait on the fever. It should sweat itself out by tomorrow. If it doesn't, call me and I'll come back right away."

"Now _you, _young lady," the doctor says, tapping her nose and rousing her from the spell she's semi-drifted into. Hermione blinks at him groggily. "You rest and get better. I don't want any rough-housing or messing around or anything of that sort. You're on bed rest. Got it?"

She makes a vaguely humanoid sound, which seems to work, because he finally leaves her alone.

Then the doctor is gone and Mrs. Cole tells her to feel better and that she's going to make sure everyone stays out of her room for the entire day and that she'll bring her lunch up soon. Hermione nods. She is asleep before the door slips shut.

She dreams of Mum and Papa.

Some odd number of hours later, Hermione opens her eyes to find a pair of hands changing the warm washcloth on her head for an ice-cold one. She sighs at the sickle-sweet relief and Tom's face swims into focus, hovering over hers and creased with concern.

_I thought no one was allowed in here, _Hermione thinks distantly, but is too tired to ask Tom how he got in. Tom always finds ways to break the rules. To get to her.

"How're you feeling, Hermione?" her friend murmurs, tracing a finger down her too-warm cheek and frowning. She shrugs, stirring when he slips into the cot with her, under the sheet she lay sweating on top of and reaching over to fluff her pillows. She's been given extra since she's sick.

"Better?" he asks.

Hermione yawns. "Yeah."

"Good." He settles in, then turns alert and anxious again in a flash. "Wait. You hungry?"

"A little..."

He grins deviously. "Good. I brought you chicken-noodle soup. Mrs. Cole said that'd make you feel better."

"Mrs. Cole let you in?"

"'Course she did." And he bats his thick girl lashes at her, pulling his angel eyes – which are very impressive and never fail to sway Mrs. Cole, or any other female. Hermione smiles a bit.

"Here, have some," Tom commands, spooning some of the soup out from the bowl steaming in his lap and blowing on the liquid before bringing it to her mouth. She blushes – which does nothing to help her condition – and mumbles _thanks_before taking a sip.

"I'm full," she complains when the soup bowl is half-empty. "And tired."

"I'll read you a book to help you sleep." Tom slurps the rest of the soup down and jumps up, grabbing a dog-eared paperback he must have brought off the bedside dresser. Hermione becomes a little more alert at the sight, trying to see the cover.

"Which one is that?" she queries, when she fails to find out for herself.

"_Wuthering Heights." _He pauses. "Girls like romances, right?"

"Well, yeah, but just 'cause I'm a girl don't mean I only read Emily Brontë and sappy stuff-"

"No, that's 'cause you're _you_," he says in correction. He doesn't give her a chance to puzzle over this though and wriggles back in the cot, plopping his head down next to hers and holding up the book so they both can see. He flips open to the first page, starting up. "_1801–I have just returned from a visit to my landlord–the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with…"_

Hermione is fast asleep within two chapters.

Tom sees she's drifted, moves around so that her head rests on his shoulder, and keeps on reading.

It's the first field trip of the year.

Hermione is excited. The whole orphanage is excited. Tom says he knows a place they can swim in, a place the other kids don't know about that's all his. He'll let her go in it though. So long as she doesn't tell anyone else about it. She agrees.

The bus ride to the beach is sweaty and tight, and the other children laugh and point out the windows, while Mrs. Cole fans herself at the front of the bus with a magazine and chats with the driver. They all wear rather saggy bathing suits under their grey tunics and have beach towels. It's hot in July.

Hermione sits with Tom. He holds her hand and tells her all about the seaside. She listens closely.

When they all get there, they squelch out of the bus's narrow doors like juice squeezed out of a ketchup bottle. Children go springing in all directions, tangling themselves in washed-up seaweed and tearing off through the sand before Mrs. Cole has a hope of rounding any of them up for safety instructions. The matron watches them all go, helplessly, and takes up her post near the surf with a resigned sigh.

The sun's balmy. The saltwater is so tangy-strong Hermione can taste it.

"So where's that special place?" Hermione whispers in Tom's ear, who grins and whispers back "Follow me. I'll show you."

He still has her hand, so when she nods all Tom has to do is pull her along the coastline.

They weave in and out, to dance around seashells and rocky ocean clutter, to laugh and skip away from the tide when it charges up like it means to get them. The farther away they get from the others, the tighter Tom's hand around hers becomes. He's real excited. The sound of laughter behind them is quieter now.

"Here it is," he finally announces, spectacularly, and slips them around the jutting crop of a cliff that soars high above them. On the other side is a small pool, not big enough to be a lake, but not small enough to be a pond either. It's perfect.

It's theirs.

"This is…so…so…" Hermione searches for a good adjective. Finally, she impressively settles with "Exemplary" and Tom is very smug. He takes off his uniform, until he's down to his swim trunks, and Hermione does the same. They go swimming.

They play games for what feels like hours, splashing and pretending and shouting out. Hermione doesn't go in very deep, because she can't swim, and Tom teases her for it. He shows off and goes to the very center of the pool, doing a backstroke and all sorts of flips, shaking his dark hair free of water when he comes back up. Hermione floats in the shallow end.

When Tom gets bored, he climbs out and dries off, grabbing the sketchbook he's brought and retreating far off to drier land in search of better scenery. Hermione blows bubbles into the water with her nose.

Loud laughter startles her.

"Looky here, Amy!" the voice of Billy Stubbs cries, and Hermione turns around to see the pimply-faced boy stumble in. She fills with dismay when she sees Amy Benson (who isn't half so bad, but has a big crush on Billy and always picks her nose like she's digging for treasure) follow him. Why are they here? This is supposed to be her and Tom's spot. _Only_ theirs.

"Look what I-" Billy Stubbs stops yelling like a Neanderthal when he sees her, bobbing in the pool and staring at him. A big glare replaces his smile. "What are you doin' here, Broomhead?" he demands.

Hermione scowls. She hates that nickname. _Broomhead. _It's not even clever.

"Well, _Broomhead?" _Billy says again, taunting her now, and Amy has arrived and laughs at her. Hermione goes red.

"You shut your fat mouth, Billy, or I'll make you," she threatens, to which Billy scoffs and marches down the slope toward her. Hermione struggles out of the water, straggly hair dripping and looking much like a wet cat whose fur has been rubbed the wrong way. Amy scampers after Billy like the lovesick goon she is.

"Oh yeah? How you gonna do that, Broomhead?" the boy sneers. "You gonna poke me in the eye with that giant ugly hair? You gonna bite me with those beaver teeth?"

"They're not beaver teeth!" Hermione shouts, because they're really not. She knows her two front teeth are slightly-overly-large and everything, but they've been that way since she turned six and her Mum and Papa told her there isn't any tooth fairy. They also explained that she'd be getting grown-up teeth to take the place of her baby ones, which would look too big until she grew into them.

She's still growing into them, obviously – but Billy Stubbs is too thick to get that.

"Watchya gonna do, beaver?" Billy mocks, pulling back his top lip so his teeth seem larger and making a disgusting face at her. "You gonna munch on some wood and make a dam?"

"Don't say that word," she snaps, in a fashion that is decidedly Mrs. Cole reminiscent, and Amy giggles.

"She's such a wet blanket," Amy says and Billy sniggers, agreeing. Hermione blushes. "What d'you think you are, the Queen?"

"No, I-"

"Ooh, better be nice, Amy," Billy interrupts loudly, eyes going big. "We're in the presence of _the Queen-"_

"Quit that!"

"Oh yes, yes, your ladyship." Amy is laughing herself silly, while Billy makes lots of bows and a show of worshipping Hermione and her 'great ugly bush of hair.' "Does your ladyship have any requests? Shall we get you a new barber, or a big piece of wood you can snack on-? Aw, looky, Amy! She's cryin' like a wittle baby. Oh, your ladyship we are so, _so_ sorry-"

"You'd better be."

They all look up, stunned, and Billy Stubbs goes pale as a Dracula victim at the sight of Tom Riddle. Hermione keeps crying.

Tom's eyes are hard. "What did you do to her?" he barks, coming over and pushing Hermione behind him. He's tall for a ten-year old and towers over the rest of them. Billy flinches. Hermione's sniveling is the only sound to be heard for a tense minute that seems to last forever.

Tom's eyes slowly narrow. "You going to answer me, Billy, or do I have to make you?"

Billy glares at him. "I ain't afraid of you, Riddle." He spits.

Tom gazes at the wad of saliva bubbling on the sand, then raises his quiet stare to Billy. Amy looks afraid. Billy is in way over his head.

"No?" he questions.

"No." Billy shakes his head firmly. He grins.

Because he thinks he's won.

"Then let's settle this like men." Tom holds Billy's eyes as a serpent does a rabbit. Billy's own pet rabbit, Babbity, is safe in Amy Benson's arms and sleeping. He's an adorable white bundle with red beads for eyes. "See that cave over there? Mrs. Cole won't see us in it. We'll go there and fight it out."

Billy squares his shoulders. "Fine."

Tom smirks. "Fine."

So Billy leads the way, with Amy scampering after him looking worried and cradling Babbity. Hermione has stopped crying and Tom takes her hand, tugging her up the hill after Billy and Amy. Taking them even farther away from the original beach they were all supposed to be playing on. He doesn't talk. He only has that Peter Pan smile and the look of someone who's got a big secret.

Hermione isn't sure she wants to know what that secret is.

"Are you really going to fight?" she asks, once they're real close to the cave Billy and Amy have already disappeared inside. Tom shakes his head. "Then what are you going to do?" Hermione says, relieved and confused at the same time.

"Something bad." Tom looks excited just saying the word. Hermione blinks.

"Bad?" she repeats. "You mean, even more bad than the time you gave Billy and the others those awful pictures?"

"Much more bad than that." Tom grins. The smile isn't Peter Pan like at all. It reminds her more of Captain Hook.

Or of some other villain entirely.

They go inside the cave and everything isn't so clear after that. Tom takes them in deep, until it's so dark they can't see a single thing. He's definitely been here before. Amy starts to cry, sure they'll never get out again and be stuck here forever. Billy tells her to grow up. She cries harder.

Tom pushes Hermione in a corner. "Close your eyes," he whispers softly, tucking a frizzy lock of hair behind her ear. The curl comes free as soon as he pulls away though.

Amy asks where Tom and Hermione went.

There's a shove, a shout, and lots of heavy breathing. Hermione's heart pounds hard in her ears when she hears a sickening crack that makes her flesh crawl all over. She bites her lip, keeping her eyes squeezed shut just like Tom told her. She listens to the sound of sobs and terror-filled shrieks, of a pulling rope. She sees nothing but the dark. She hopes this will end soon. She hears her blood roaring like a train's wheels over railway tracks…

She nearly jumps out of her skin when a hand wraps around hers.

"It's me," Tom whispers into her ear.

Hermione gasps and flies into him, holding him tight. "Can we go, Tom? Please?" she says desperately. "Can you get us out of here?"

"Well, maybe…"

"Tom!"

"Ok, ok." He snickers. "Come on, hold onto me." He adds, mischievously, "Or you might get stuck in here forever."

Hermione shudders.

When they all board the bus to go back to the orphanage, word has already spread that Amy and Billy are missing. Mrs. Cole starts a search party with the bus driver and other chaperones that have come on the outing. The adults find the two children after two hours of looking, lost in a cave with a dead rabbit hanging from the rafters. They won't say what's happened no matter how hard Mrs. Cole pushes for answers.

But the other children know.

Yes, they know about Tom Riddle, and they know two things they'll never ever forget. One: something unspeakable happened in the cave that day. And two: unless they want the same thing to happen to them, they'll stay far away from Hermione Granger.

At all costs.


	4. Chapter 4

_London, England_  
_1936_

A man named Dumberton – or something like that – comes to take Tom away.

Hermione listens through the door to Tom's room, pressing her ear against the glass cup she's got there and struggling to make out conversation. She hears Tom say _I'm not mad! _and something about the new kid Dennis Bishop and Amy Benson, too. She bites her lip, listening harder.

What if Dunderbore is one of those crazy shrinks? What if he makes Tom go to some horrible hospital, to strap him up and do evil things to him?

They'll have to escape.

She can make a plan. She's smart. She'll think of something. And with Tom, a boy slippier than quicksand and just as fast, there'll be no stopping them-

Footsteps approach the door and Hermione leaps away, grabbing her sponge and bucket and pretending like she's been scrubbing the perfectly clean floor all along. She tries not to look up when Dumblyore steps out, but can't help staring when she sees his vibrant purple suit.

"Miss," Dudlemore says, and she freezes. Reluctantly, she looks up to see the man staring at her with twinkly blue eyes. She blinks. "I believe you are supposed to scrub the floor with that sponge there, not the bucket." He beams.

Hermione frowns, looks at her cleaning instruments – which are in the wrong hands doing the wrong things – and she flushes, mumbling _oops _and fixing them quickly. She thinks her catastrophic hair has turned red from all her blushing. Doomblere chuckles and moves right on along.

As soon as he's gone, Hermione springs up and dashes into Tom's room.

"What'd he say?" she gasps, hands dripping with soap-water and thick hair practically crackling. She shoves a frizzy, itchy tuft out of her eye. Tom is sitting on the bed, staring at something in his hands, and he momentarily lifts his head to look at her. She rushes over.

"You don't have to go," she says quickly. "They can't make you. I mean, I think they can't. I read a law book once and you can get a lawyer to defend you, you know. It'll cost a bit of money but I'm sure we can scrape something up if we look around–"

"I got in." It's just a murmur.

Hermione stares at Tom, confused. "Got in what?"

"The…the school." He's looking at her, but he's not looking at her really. His eyes are shining right through her – seeing something she cannot. "They accepted me. They gave me a scholarship and I'm going there next month, to–to–to-" He can't finish in his wild excitement. He's grinning big. He's in awe.

She doesn't get it.

"Tom, what d'you mean?" Hermione asks, frustrated. Tom's eyes clear and he looks at her. _Really _looks at her.

"I mean," he says lowly, in a fierce whisper, "_I've been accepted by the Hogwarts Institute of Fine Arts."_

"Oh." She's surprised. Then it sinks in and she's thrilled. "Oh, Tom! That's amazing. But how? I mean, how did they know about your art?"

"I don't know." He stares down again, at what she now understands is an acceptance letter. "Professor Dumbledore says he's seen me drawing out and about though. You know, when we go into the city…" he trails off, and he's gazing into the distance again, eyes glossy and faraway.

"Tell me more," Hermione says, snapping him out of it. "What're you gonna learn there? Where is it?" She remembers when she went to a girl's charter school, in a time that feels very far away from now, and is endlessly happy for Tom.

That feeling diminishes when he tells her Hogwarts is a boarding school.

"I'll be back for holidays though, I suppose," Tom says, reading through the letter he's already read twenty-six times in the past hour and frowning in thought. "Or at least, I'll be back for summer vacation. That's what it says here anyway-"

"That's _it?" _Hermione says, horrified. She feels cold. She feels like someone has dumped a big ice bucket all on her world, making things slippery and topsy-turvy and…and ruining absolutely everything.

Tom looks at her, still grinning. Seeing her expression, his smile disappears. "What is it?" he asks, scooting over to her across the sea of papers that have come out of a thick manila envelope stamped with the Hogwarts crest and now lie all over his bed. He tugs one of her hands free, intertwining it with his. "What's wrong, Hermione?"

"I…" She hesitates. She doesn't want to tell him. To be a bad friend. "Nothing. Never mind."

Tom scowls. "You know I hate it when you don't tell me things. Tell me the truth."

Hermione sees the dark look in his eyes, sighs, and does. "It's just, what am I going to do without you?" she finally finishes. "I don't have any other friends here and I'll be all alone-"

"You don't need other friends," Tom says immediately. He puts his head on her shoulder and uses the full force of his angel eyes to rid her of any doubt, with a syrup-sweet smile to boot. Hermione finds herself melting like a popsicle in the middle of July. "Besides, I'll send you letters all the time," he promises. "You won't even know I'm gone."

Hermione frowns. She isn't so sure about that.

Tom's breath tickles as he whispers into her ear, softly. "Be happy for me, Hermione. This is meant to be."

The months, as predicted, pass very slowly. Hermione goes to Sunday services at the chapel with the other orphans and sits in the pews alone, reading along as directed. She eats by herself in the eating hall (Martha wouldn't sit with her when she asked and neither would anyone else, for some reason) and no one besides Mrs. Cole ever talks to her really. She marches with the others during bomb shelter drills. She spends a lot of time reading in the makeshift library.

She's very lonely.

Tom sends her letters, like he said he would, and she learns all about Hogwarts through them. He tells her how wonderful everything is there, how _new _everything is, how many people there are. She knows all there is to know about the whacky professors, the classes, the students, his friends and his enemies. Tom says he has so much to tell her when he gets back.

She counts the days until he does.

And then, at last, Tom returns.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1947 – present_

Hermione is stocking shelves when she notices a man looking at her.

He's tall, with broad shoulders and burly arms under his sports jacket. He's rather cute too. All blonde curls and blue eyes.

She averts her eyes hastily, moving onto the next aisle to look for a display she can fix. She finds one quick and makes a beeline to it. She tidies the strewn necklaces and color-coordinates the earrings the way Madame Pomfrey trains all her employees to do. She reprimands herself for being such a chicken.

A minute or two later, the man from before walks into her aisle. He looks nonchalant. He pretends to examine a selection of scarves and she watches him curiously, distracted by the dimple in his cheek. He sees her looking and smiles.

Hermione looks away so fast her neck cracks and she blushes hard, because she's being an idiot. Because she's letting _him _rule her life still, even though she hasn't seen _him_ in over six years. Because she's afraid every time a man her age looks at her.

Working as a seamstress in a store that strictly only receives female customers has always fit her perfectly.

But, for some reason, there's a man in the shop today.

_Stop it, _Hermione berates herself. _You're being stupid. You can talk to men._

Before she can lose her nerve, she spins around and pastes on her best_ what-can-I-do-for-you? _smile. "Can I help you, sir?" she says springily. Like nothing would please her more than to help people pick what color underwear best suits them.

It's all about being artificial in this business, she reflects.

The man blinks at her optimistic beaming and scans her, briefly. He grins. "Actually, yes." His voice is very deep. Hermione crosses her fingers behind her back. "I'm shopping for Mother's Day, but I haven't got a clue what to get my mum. Maybe you can help me out?" His smile is definitely flirtatious.

Hermione opens her mouth to reply, to say yes readily, but…

She can't.

Paranoia hits her on all sides, crashing and tormenting and making her swallow thick. Questions she's spent years shoving into the darkest corners of her subconscious come rolling in like waves. What if _he _sees? What will _he _do? The man will be hurt for sure. Tom hates it when boys look at her… He hates it when others touch her… She doesn't need friends. All she needs is him, _him,_ and no one else ever-

_Stop._

The memories evaporate, along with the terror. Hermione breathes a sigh of relief and thinks to herself, _I'm not a child anymore. I am a full-grown adult, independent and deserving. I am not irrational. I am in perfect control._

She looks up at the man, whose smile is faltering now, and she helps him find some lipstick for his mother. His name is Cormac McLaggen. While he browses through the different brands and shades, she finds herself looking over her shoulder more than once.

As expected, there's no one there to look out for.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1937_

He's a bit taller. And he talks different, like a character from a Dickens or Jane Austen novel. So Hermione starts talking that way too, which isn't too hard since she reads so much 19th century literature anyway. He tells her awesome stories. He makes her laugh and smile and envious and awed all at once.

She's really missed him.

It's picture day and the fourth day since Tom's come back when… trouble starts up again.

They all stand in line, each waiting for their turn with the photographer behind the black screen, and most of the boys – who are much wickeder now – put the tiny mirrors they've been given on the black-and-white tile floor, angling them with their toes so they can look up the skirt of the girl standing in front of them. Hermione is worried someone might look up hers at first, but Tom takes care of that by bunching her skirt in a fist and holding it while they wait in line.

Not that anyone would dare to peek at Hermione Granger's knickers when Tom Riddle is around.

It's almost her turn. Hermione peers into her little mirror and tries to smooth down some of her horrible frizz without success for a few minutes. She meets two dark eyes in her mirror and grins. Tom grins back.

But then his face goes sour.

_What's wrong? _Hermione frowns and turns around, to see what he's glowering at, and gasps when Tom's fist connects with the face of the boy behind him with a crunching _crack_. It's Peter Kowsakowski, who hits the ground solid and cries out while Tom yells above him in a shrill scream: _"What are you looking at her for?"_

Everyone's staring. Peter, who's crying on the floor, grabs his bleeding nose and cowers. Tom's unreachable in his blinding white rage.

"_Don't you ever – _ever – _let me catch you looking at her again, filth," _he hisses, kicking him hard in the ribs. They all flinch at the blow and kids start shouting, 'fight, fight!' "_Or else I swear to God I'll tear you apart and really make you scream-"_

"TOM RIDDLE!" Mrs. Cole screeches, coming down on them like an avenging angel. She's furious. "What the devil are you doing? Have you gone mad? Come with me, right now. Jennifer, wash Peter off and get him an ice pack."

Tom scowls and Mrs. Cole gives him an evil look, pointing one shaking finger down the opposite corridor, away from the photo op. He shuffles down, and Hermione and the others look on, stunned. All of them jump when Mrs. Cole whips back around.

"What're you all looking at, eh?" she demands. The children immediately spin the other way. "And you, Hermione, you come here as well."

Hermione gapes at Mrs. Cole. _She'_s in trouble? But she hasn't done anything. She never does anything!

"Don't give me that look, get going," says Mrs. Cole sternly, starting down the hall again. Hermione follows, well aware of the many eyes on her and catching up to Tom quickly. She sends him a worried look. He doesn't meet her eyes and glares ahead of them, balled fists shaking and hunched shoulders rigid.

"Stop right there," the matron behind them finally calls, and they do, turning around to face her. Mrs. Cole puts her hands on her hips and scrutinizes them.

Then she asks it. _The _question.

"What's happened here?"

"Peter was-" Tom begins, schooling his handsome features into a Mary-and-Joseph-innocent mask, but Mrs. Cole shakes her head and points. Points at Hermione.

She gulps.

"No, no, not from you, Tom," Mrs. Cole interrupts. "I want to hear the story from Hermione here. I know she'll tell me what's really happened."

Tom scowls.

Hermione squirms.

"So, dear," Mrs. Cole says, in a controlled, kind voice. "Can you tell me what's happened just now?"

Hermione is staring at her matron in frozen horror when Tom sidles up just behind her, bending his mouth to her ear. "_Lie_," he whispers. "Tell her he was trying to look up your skirt and that I stopped him."

She bites her lip. It's a good idea. But it means lying to Mrs. Cole. She doesn't want to do that.

She doesn't want to be a bad friend either.

"Come on, Hermione," says Tom impatiently. "Do it now and make it good."

"Well, Hermione?" Mrs. Cole raises both eyebrows expectantly. "I'm waiting."

When the lie passes Hermione's lips, finally, Tom squeezes her hand. In encouragement. In approval. He smiles at Mrs. Cole, who is red with fury and telling one of the helpers to get the paddle for Peter.

Hermione remembers Peter's broken nose and knows she hasn't made the right choice.

Tom chuckles quietly.

The summer with Tom is a rotation between Sunday service, trips to the seaside and their secret pool, and stolen outings to art museums. The first time they sneak off, Hermione is nervous about being caught, but Tom gets them in and out easy. Mrs. Cole is none the wiser. Tom's sketchbooks fill faster now.

Tom draws _the Last Judgement _by Michelangelo into his sketchbook. Every other minute or so, he squints at his picture and his face screws up in displeasure as he chews the nasty-tasting eraser of a pencil. He's concentrating. Hermione asks why he's copying the artists.

"I'm not copying," Tom corrects, squinting at _Guernica. _"I'm learning through repetition. You learn from the Masters."

"The Masters are the earlier artists? Like da Vinci and the rest?" Hermione guesses.

"Yes." Tom erases something, then fixes it with a swift stroke of lead. "And Professor Merryweather says I should practice my observation drawing."

She nods and retreats back to her side of the bench, where they both sit back-to-back. She's cross-legged with a large tome in her lap. He's long-legged and sprawled about carelessly, with a sketchbook and pencil in-hand. They're inseparable.

Tom likes it that way.

Hermione sees a group of children pass by, laughing and pointing at the artworks. They're having fun, all of them. They goof off. They giggle at the pictures of naked women. They're like a big family.

Hermione moves closer to Tom, wishing he'd let her have other friends.

Moody comes back.

Hermione hasn't seen the oddball retired police officer in nearly two years, so to say that she's surprised when Mrs. Cole shows up at the eating hall with the trench-coat-donning man in tow would be a complete lie. She's _stunned_.

"Hermione," Mrs. Cole calls out, over the chaotic jumble of shouting and laughter. "Hermione, come here please!"

Tom frowns. "Who's that man?"

"It's Moody." Hermione stands up, excited and grinning. She knows why he's here. He's here to take her back, back to her Mum and Papa. They've gotten back together and they regret everything they've done. They want her back. They're going to send her to school. She's going to have everything she's lost again.

"Come on," she says eagerly, hurrying to Mrs. Cole and Moody with Tom close behind. "You'll like him. He's really interesting."

Tom nods, but he doesn't look convinced.

"Hullo again, missy," says Moody, once they arrive, and he holds out a clawish hand for her to shake. She shakes said hand happily. "How're you these days?"

"Good, sir."

"Good." Moody rolls back on the balls of his feet, looking a good deal uncomfortable, and his glass eye fastens onto Tom, who is holding her hand possessively and trying to hide her behind him. He raises two bushy brows the color of yellow rust. "Who's this here, eh?"

"Tom." Hermione smiles at the boy in question, who is watching Moody with suspicious eyes. Tom has successfully gotten her behind him. She stands on her tip-toes and peers over his shoulder at Moody, beaming. "He's my best friend." _And he can come with us when I go back to my parents_, she thinks. All Mum and Papa have to do is sign the papers.

"He is, eh?" Moody nods, extending a hand Tom shakes firmly. Moody eyes him. Tom eyes him back. "Righto, chap," he says at last.

"Yes, yes," Mrs. Cole interrupts hastily. "Ah, Moody, perhaps you would like to speak to Hermione somewhere…private?"

Moody looks even more uncomfortable at this. It's an odd expression on him: uncomfortableness, Hermione observes. His chin sinks into his flabby neck like it's trying to disappear and his glass eye kind of whirs around, like the needle of a clock gone kooky. He does indeed look very uncomfortable.

"Er, well, yes, I suppose," blusters Moody. He stamps his wooden leg and jerks his shy chin at the double doors leading out of the cafeteria, marching off abruptly. Mrs. Cole tells Hermione to go with him.

"Wait one second, Tom Riddle." They both turn around, to see their matron clucking her tongue and waggling a disapproving finger at them. "I didn't say _you _needed to go. This is Hermione's business, not yours."

Tom pouts. "But she needs me."

"She'll be just fine on her own, dear."

Tom changes tactics then, putting on his angel eyes and giving Mrs. Cole a miserable look that would make the Devil weep with pity. "Please, Mrs. Cole? I promise I won't bother anybody."

Mrs. Cole sighs. "Now, Tom," she lectures. "Hermione needs to do this on her own. You can see her later, alright?"

"But-"

"Off you go, Hermione, my dear." Mrs. Cole clamps a firm hand on Tom's shoulder, to keep him from going after her. "No, no, you're staying right here with me, Mr. Riddle."

Tom hisses like a spited cat.

Hermione glances back at her irate friend, concerned, but then the doors swing shut and she goes after Moody. He has news for her. Tom will have to wait.

When Moody finally decides the outdoor, sad-looking courtyard is better than all the other places they've paced and hastened through to tell Hermione her news, he has her sit down. She wonders why – how can she sit down when she's so excited? Is sitting supposed to help her somehow? Or does it just make him less uncomfortable? – but she does anyway, because Moody looks like he might keel over at any moment.

The squirming man goes back and forth before her in sharp, stern steps. His right wooden leg clunks against the sidewalk heavier than his left one.

Just when she's getting a little bored, Moody stops and gruffly says, "Missy."

"Mr.," Hermione replies.

Moody looks surprised at this, then shakes himself and continues, "I have some news for you. It is not of the most pleasant kind, but in a way, it is, because it's all about the way you look at it. I hope you look at it in a sort of happy way, but I understand if you don't, because you are very young and may not learn to look at it in a happy way until you are much older. Do you understand?"

"I suppose."

"Good." He nods, then starts pacing again. He stops. "Well damn."

Hermione frowns. "What is it, sir?"

"I'm not very good at this."

"At what?"

He hesitates. "At…at informing you that your…" There must be something large and painful in his throat, because he swallows thickly and goes a little purple in the face. Hermione watches him curiously. Moody gathers himself.

"My dear… Your… your mother has passed away," he says at last.

Hermione doesn't understand at first. Then, her heart goes heavy and the world narrows until all she can see is Moody's glass eye, jumping around and bouncing like a nervous chipmunk. There is something large and painful in _her_ throat now. She stops breathing.

She is sure the world has stopped spinning, too.

She doesn't really hear the rest of Moody's words. He talks about funerals and deeds and other morbid things. About Heaven. About God's forgiveness and suicide. Hermione thinks he says her Papa is still missing. It doesn't occur to her to wonder how Moody found out her parents haven't really been dead all this time.

And then Moody is gone and Mrs. Cole is there, trying to reassure her, but it doesn't work so she leaves and comes back with a little handsome boy. The boy sits down beside her in the empty courtyard and puts his arms around her, laying his head on top of hers and rubbing her back. Never saying a word.

A tear slips out of her eye. It's different than the usual tears. This one means more somehow. It isn't shed because she's scraped her knee or because Eric Whalley said something stupid about her hair.

It's because she's never going to see her parents again.

For real now.

She cries into Tom's shirt and he holds her while she cries, for hours and hours. Until the blue sky turns grey with rain clouds and she can't cry anymore. Until she lies against him, feeling small and empty and abandoned. Orphaned.

"It'll be alright," Tom murmurs, petting back her thick hair. She won't pull her face out of his shirt. "It's alright." He rests his cheek on her head, smiling. He likes holding Hermione. He likes the way she clutches him like she has no one else to hold onto. Like he's the only one in the world. "You've always got me, Hermione."

She sucks in a shuddering breath. "Really?"

"Really." Tom kisses her sticky cheek and licks his lips. They taste salty. Hermione watches him with big, sad eyes. He stares at the different shades of brown and the ring of yellow around her small pupils. They're tiny dots in a whole vat of caramel. He wonders what sort of paints he could use to make that color. To capture the miserable wetness in her eyes.

Hermione closes her eyes and starts sobbing again before he can figure it out.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1938_

Tom returns from art school handsomer and taller. He does his hair a different way. His voice is deeper. He tells Hermione stories about Hogwarts and the girls he's kissed there, about Professor Slughorn who teaches ceramics and about all his different studies. He doesn't just draw anymore, but paints and inks and sculpts out of the wet sand on the coast during their monthly trips to the seaside.

Over the year when Tom was gone, Hermione had started to sneak off to the big city library and check out books there. Mrs. Cole doesn't notice the novels she now carries aren't from their makeshift library. If she did, Hermione doesn't know what she'd say. She's not a good liar like Tom.

In the museum, Hermione looks up from _Through the Looking Glass _and peers over Tom's shoulder, trying to catch a peek of his picture. Before she can though – like always – Tom swiftly flips the cover of his sketchbook down and smirks at her, cocking a brow. "Can I help you?" he asks.

She pouts. "Why won't you let me see it?"

"Because it's not finished." He turns back to the object of his attention, _Madonna & Child, _and studies it. "It has to be finished before anyone can see it."

Hermione sighs. "Alright, alright." She wriggles back over to her side of the bench, resting her back against his and reopening her book. Her head comes to just between his shoulders. He really has gotten taller.

Sometime later, Tom leans his head back against hers and sighs. "Your hair is like a pillow."

She scowls. "Shut up."

He sniggers.

"Are you done yet?" she says curiously, twisting around. In response, Tom offers her his sketchbook. She takes it, noting that his long pale fingers are tinged black on the tips from charcoal. She examines the picture and then gives it back. It's extraordinary, as always.

Tom stands up, pulling his messenger bag over his neck and slipping his supplies inside it. He holds out his hand to her, a silent command she knows well now, and she slips her hand inside it. He twirls their fingers together and tugs them toward the exit, where the critical whispers and strolling observers of the art museum are traded for busybodies on the city street. Hermione sees a kiosk selling drippy ice cream and her stomach growls. Tom catches her hungry look.

"Do you want some?" he asks, nodding at the vendor.

"Yes." She bites her lip. "I wish we had some money."

Tom grins like Peter Pan. "Money? What do we need money for?"

She looks at him questioningly, but he's already let her go and is weaving through the buzzing crowd to the kiosk. She watches anxiously. What if Tom gets caught? What will she do then? What will she tell Mrs. Cole?

She wishes she never said anything.

Minutes later, Tom returns, two strawberry ice creams in hand and a smug smirk plastered to his handsome face. People look at him curiously as they pass. But then again, Tom has the kind of face you look twice at.

"Here you are," he says regally, like he's a knight presenting the head of an evil dragon to his queen. Hermione frowns.

"You stole that?"

He shrugs.

She bites her lip. "You shouldn't have done that. It's illegal. You could get into trouble, you know-"

"So? You're the one who wanted the damn thing," he says, annoyed, and Hermione winces at the curse. She stares at her ratty shoes.

"Take it, Hermione."

She shakes her head.

Tom glares at her. "Are you saying no?"

Hermione darts a nervous look at him, then glances away hastily. She nods slightly.

Tom steps closer and she's afraid, afraid of what he'll do and what he'll say. He can be mean when he wants to. Scary. "You can't say no to me," he declares quietly.

She looks away.

"Look at me."

Hermione won't.

"Stop being so stupid," Tom snaps. "Just take the damn ice cream, won't you?"

"You stole it," she repeats. "I can't."

Tom stares at her. Waiting for her to take it back. To beg him for forgiveness. To fall back into his arms and accept that she's in the wrong.

But she doesn't.

"Fine_,_" he hisses and throws both ice creams on the ground. He stomps on them and kicks them and says nasty things to her, slicking his feet all on the sidewalk until the summer treats are nothing but dirty slush and cone crumbs. He shouts at her. He yanks at his hair and roars like a rabid animal. Hermione's lip quivers.

"What are you crying for?" Tom spits, seeing her tears and sneering. "You're the one who made me do it. You wanted the blasted, _stupid_, god-damned ice cream!"

"Why are you acting like this?"

"I said _stop crying_." He storms back over to her and she does, abruptly, but that doesn't stop him. Tom grabs her cheek and pinches it hard, twisting the skin harshly. She shrieks. "When I tell you to do something," Tom snarls, "you do it. Got it?"

She nods quickly, eyes watering.

"Good." His narrowed eyes slowly calm and he lets go of her cheek, which feels raw and bleats painfully. Hermione sobs miserably and cups the purpling skin. "If Mrs. Cole asks about that, you fell, alright?" Tom says quietly.

Hermione nods.

They walk back to the orphanage in silence. Hermione wants to be far, far away from Tom and his mean fingers. He's hurt her. She never wants to see him again. She hates the way he holds her hand so tightly. How his fingers twist through hers like they belong there. How handsome he is.

"Hermione," the boy himself says softly.

Hermione glances at him, sees his angel eyes, and looks away fast. No, he can't make her like him again. No, no-

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I didn't mean it. You just made me angry."

She frowns.

"Hermione."

Her eyes almost stray to him, but then snap away quickly. She can't look. No, she can't-

"Please forgive me, Hermione." Tom stops them outside the back door to the orphanage and gives her beautiful, earnest eyes. They're deep and creamy-pure like dark chocolate, with long straight eyelashes any woman would kill for. The eyes of an angel. Hermione's breath catches just from looking at them.

Tom sees her expression change and smiles slowly, victoriously. She tentatively smiles back and he hugs her. She melts against him. He's sorry. He won't do it again.

So she'll forgive him.

"You know I didn't mean it," says Tom, resting his forehead on hers and whispering. "I'd never hurt you on purpose." Hermione nods, because she believes him. Because Tom's voice is so sweet it makes candy canes look sour.

Because he's got her heart in his faery fingers.

It's sweltering hot in the chapel. The pews seem closer together. The lot of them look like grey wax figurines, melting in the heat and panting their verses back to Reverend Richard. He preaches at them as if he thinks he's the holy prophet. Hermione is pretty sure he does. Tom is bored again and he slouches down in the bench so Mrs. Cole doesn't see him doodling pictures of serene-faced angels on the Bible. It's blasphemy, technically.

Looking at his drawings though, Hermione can't help thinking that Tom makes blasphemy look beautiful.

She doesn't give a start when Tom abandons his doodles and moves onto the next object of entertainment, which is her – naturally. She's used to it now. She knows why the other children won't hang out with or talk to her. She knows what Mrs. Cole calls her when she drinks gin with the helpers in her office.

_Tom Riddle's living doll._

She's used to it though. Or so she tells herself.

So Tom dances his long fingers up and down her stocking-clad leg, playing with the pleated folds of her skirt. They're all dressed in Sunday-best: a grey blouse and grey skirt for girls, a grey dress shirt and grey slacks for boys.

Tom somehow looks rather dashing in the dreary garb.

He keeps his eyes on the Bible balanced between them, mouthing the verses and scooting closer to her. It's blistering hot, but Tom feels cool as still water. She knows because he traces his fingers along her spine, under the back of her blouse where no one can see. Sometimes he does it absent-mindedly, but then there are other times when he touches her just to see what she'll do in response. He toys with her. She's his little experiment.

Hermione sighs and continues chanting, more loudly. If Mrs. Cole sees, she'll think it's Christian passion. But it's really just her trying to ignore Tom.

Tom never gives up though.

He smooths down the waistband of her skirt a bit, skimming his nails along the perspiring flesh there. He traces the ridges of her spine, pressing deeper, tugging the fine hairs for kicks, digging in to get her to jump and squirm. He grins triumphantly when he feels goosebumps break down her back. Hermione snaps at him and Mrs. Cole whips around, hawk-like eyes scanning her charges vigilantly. Tom slips his hand out of her shirt just as the matron finds them.

Seeing nothing amiss, Mrs. Cole slowly turns back around.

Tom whispers in her ear. "What made you shiver?"

Hermione tries to ignore him. He asks again.

"The nails," she says at last, quickly, and resumes the reading with a blush on her face. Tom chuckles. He goes back inside her shirt, to lazily scratch her back with his nails, and she shivers again. It's hard to concentrate. He knows she likes it best when he rubs her back and soon he starts to, making her eyes flicker. She feels drowsy in that sleepy cat way, in a way that makes her want to curl up under the sun and take a nap.

Tom slides his hand around to her soft stomach, tracing the delicate flesh there. Hermione giggles when he tickles her. An elderly man sitting in front of them slowly turns around and sends her a withering death glare.

The service is over.

Everyone congregates to the vestibule, to the gentler air outside, in a slow shuffle. As she and Tom join the line of duckies that Mrs. Cole leads, Tom twirls his fingers through hers and makes sure she doesn't bump shoulders with the other boys. He doesn't like it when other people touch her.

Only he is allowed touch.

They're in the art museum again.

Hermione puts down _Jane Eyre_and looks around, wondering why Tom is taking so long. He said he had to go to the loo twenty minutes ago. She goes searching for him.

Walking through the museum and exhibits she knows well now, Hermione doesn't pause to reflect or examine as she tows along. She finally finds Tom inside an in-construction exhibit, hidden behind a dusty tarp in an empty corner of the vast showroom. She hurries over, but then slows when she sees he isn't alone.

There's a girl here.

Hermione freezes, watching Tom and the girl bend and twist messily. The girl is pretty and looks to be a year older than him. She giggles and laughs while they French kiss. Hermione blushes, because she knows Tom kisses other girls - he's told her so – but seeing him do it is another thing entirely, and it makes her feel strange. Like she's on the outside. Like she's been forgotten.

Tom opens his sleepy eyes from behind the girl's wavy golden hair and sees her watching. He blinks. She bolts.

Hurrying away, Hermione curses herself. Why did she have to stay and look? Why did Tom have to see her? Oh, this is _so_ embarrassing…

Slapping herself down on the bench, she finds she feels quite put out.

Tom comes back.

He sits down and picks up his sketchbook and pen, like nothing's happened. This makes Hermione angry. She turns on him. "Your hair looks like a rat nest," she states unkindly, then whirls back around and pouts at a Berlin.

Tom frowns at her, fixing his hair. "What's _your_ problem?"

"Nothing," she says waspishly.

He blinks at the sharpness in her tone and cocks his head, trying to get her to look at him. But she won't. She knows he has his angel eyes on and she's not falling for it. So Tom tries to wriggle his hand into hers, but she snatches it away and crosses her arms, hiding her hands under them. When he puts his chin on her shoulder, like he used to do all the time when they were really little, she just goes stiff.

"What's wrong?" Tom says at last, bewildered. "Why are you acting like this?"

"I'm not acting like anything."

"Yes you are." His eyes slant into jaguar slits. "Why are you lying to me?"

"Why do you have to know everything I'm thinking?" she snaps.

Tom's expression goes dark. He looks around at the people surrounding them. They're not paying attention, so he sneaks his faery fingers up to her neck and pinches her hard. She yelps. He twists hard and tears spring to her eyes.

"You're being rude." His voice is strangely soft for all the fire in his eyes. He whispers in her ear. "_Apologize_."

"N-no."

"Hermione," he warns. "Apologize or else I'll make you regret this."

She juts out her bottom lip, giving him a miserable look. His eyes narrow further.

"I'm going to count to three." He sounds like Mrs. Cole. Hermione scowls at him. "One… two… two-and-a-half…"

"Sorry."

He raises a brow. "What was that?"

_"Sorry,"_ she spits again, nastily.

He eyes her and unsnaps his fingers from where they're cinched around her flesh. She rubs the tender skin, moaning softly. It's going to bruise. She'll have to lie to Mrs. Cole again.

"Let's go," Tom finally says, with a strange little smile. "You've ruined my mood."

_I don't care, _Hermione thinks, but she doesn't say it. She doesn't want Tom to pinch her again. She has half a mind to pinch him.

But that would be dumb.

And Hermione is anything but dumb.

Tom Riddle is everything but sweet.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Thank you for the reviews and love! I read them all and appreciate you so much. **

* * *

_London, England_  
_1939_

Hermione keeps her hair tied back now. It sort of helps the bigness, but it doesn't do much for the frizz. She celebrates her twelfth birthday alone. Tom sends her letters all year, but not as many as he did before.

And then it's summer at last.

Tom tells her stories about Hogwarts, as he always does. He makes her go bright red when he tells her about dirty things he's done with the girls there. He calls the other boys _virgins _and snickers when Mrs. Cole reprimands them for waking up stiff and soiling their sheets. He's much taller. Somehow, he's even handsomer. He watches her like a hawk.

At the museum, Hermione moves away from an entrancing painting filled with cubes and bright, distinct colors. She opens her latest book. It's _Henry V_ and filled with tea stains and scribbles where the last person who read it didn't appreciate the integrity of a well-kept book. She smooths the crease of a bent page with her pinky finger, frowning.

"Don't move," Tom says suddenly, startling her. Her head snaps up, doing precisely the opposite of what he's asked. Tom is staring at her in a strange way that she can't quite put her finger on, as if she is both familiar and foreign to him. He chews his eraser thoughtfully. The bridge of his delicate nose wrinkles around the bone and he suddenly looks the same boy she found in the library of Wool's Orphanage for a second... except taller. He says, "Stay right there for a moment."

"Why?" Hermione asks, propping her hand on one hip. Her wrist is growing tired from holding the book.

"Just stay still," he presses. When she scowls, he adds with a soft smile that makes her breath stutter: "Please, Hermione."

Hermione knows that look in his eyes. It is at once capturing and captured by its' subject, like a siren of legend who seduces sailors with sweet, deadly song and is seduced by the call of their blood in return. Tom's fingers twitch toward his pencil case eagerly. At the moment, she is the blood and he is the siren, or perhaps it is the other way around. She can never be sure. She sighs and casts a glance around them at the section they stand in. It's empty, save for a woman carting a baby stroller and her husband, and the Picasso painting beside them. "...Alright," she says at last. "But not for too long, my legs are tired from walking all day." Tom grins in triumph.

While Tom sits on a bench and draws her in a hectic throe of inspiration, Hermione stares at a distant Greek sculpture until the face blurs into a smear of white. The limbs look so graceful. How could they be made of marble when they looked so soft and supple? She closes her eyes, trying not to give into the prickling sensation of her foot falling asleep. She doesn't move a muscle until Tom clears his throat.

"Finished?"

He nods.

"Can I look?" Hermione asks, moving to stand beside him. Her foot screams with pain in protest. She grunts, limping into the seat beside him. Tom is shaking his head and covering the drawing with his hands.

"No." He flips the sketchbook closed and rakes his fingernails over the cover, chipping at the cardboard and his initials, _T.M.R.,_ stenciled into it. "Not yet," he mutters. "Maybe later.'"

Hermione blinks in surprise. "Didn't you finish it?"

"Not exactly." He shifts restlessly. "I couldn't get your eyes right."

"Really?" Tom has never failed to draw anything before. _Ever._

"Let's go," he says abruptly, standing up. He didn't answer her question. "I think I'm done with observation drawing for the day. And I'm bored of this place anyway."

"Already?"

Tom grins and takes her hand in his, tugging until she stumbles to her feet. He slips his arm around her lanky waist and sneaks his fingers into the pocket of her grey smock, as if he's going to pilfer her pennies. Not that Hermione has any pennies. "Don't look so surprised," he says, steering them toward the exit. "One would think you hardly know me at all."

She scoffs. "I know you, Tom. Better than _you_ know you."

He looks at her, no longer smiling. "Are you certain of that?" he says quietly.

Before she can answer him they are on the crowded streets of East London. The heavy air is damp with the promise of rain and the smell of cooking fish. Hermione's stomach growls so loudly that Tom laughs and asks if she would like him to jump in River Thames to fetch her the fisherman's catch. She thumps him on the head, forgetting about his question and the queer look in his dark eyes a moment before.

* * *

At the cove, the sun is so hot it bakes the sand into a blistering sheet of heat underfoot. Hermione cools her feet in the shallow end of the pool, drying off from her swim in the sun. She lines seashells in a row on her towel while Tom shows off his breaststrokes for the girls running by. He doesn't like them - they're too small-minded and ugly for a Hogwarts boy, according to Tom - but he does like their attention. The girls take off giggling and screeching when he catches them looking. Hermione rolls her eyes, grumbling under her breath when a 13-year old redhead trips over a rock trying to get a peek at Tom Riddle shirtless.

But Tom tires of this game soon. He walks patiently toward Hermione, throwing himself on the burning sand as if it is a throw blanket. The water in his hair splatters her book. "Hey, watch it!" she snaps.

"You're the only girl I know who comes to the beach to _read_," he says, smirking. He looks as skinny as a rod, but his skin is smooth and pale like milk under the sun. Tom Riddle does not have a single pimple or blemish like the other children do. Hermione starts to touch the sensitive pimple on her chin and stops, remembering what Mrs. Cole told her about a woman's hygiene.

Hermione remembers kind, loving fingers weaving through her hair when she was little. She doesn't know why the memory comes to her just then. Mum's face is only a blurred smudge now, like a chalk drawing on the sidewalk washed away by rain. The details have gone soft and muddled in her head, confusing her.

She looks down at Tom's wet black hair and his closed eyes. He snores lightly. His eyelashes curl and brush the tops of his carved cheekbones. He could be made of porcelain.

She touches his hair slowly, experimentally, and he doesn't move. Feeling bold, Hermione pulls her fingers through the soaked strands. They leave streaks behind, like stiff strips of black acrylic paint. Tom's eyes flutter open and watch her. He reminds her of a cat, still and strange... and impossible to read. Tom is the one thing in the world that Hermione cannot make sense of, even after all these years. She could have the Rosetta Stone and still never be able to translate his expressions into English. Sometimes, she wonders if Tom came from a different world. But her theory was rejected when Mrs. Cole told Hermione that she saw Tom Riddle's mother give birth to him in the orphanage.

"Is this ok?" Hermione asks. She is whispering without knowing why.

Tom's eyes are intent on her fingers where they've paused in the air an inch over his nose. He pulls them back down to his head, applying pressure to her knuckles until they curl around him again. "Yes. It feels... nice." He closes his eyes, his breaths slowing into sleep again when she continues to comb his hair with her fingers. The sun warms their skin and turns hers gilded until she is dark as bronze. Tom stays white as snow... as usual.

Hermione sees one of the older girls run by in the distance and stops her exercise, watching and realizing with shock that the older girl isn't much older than her at all. It's Amy Benson. Amy Benson with…with _breasts_.

What the devil?

She blinks and looks down at her flat chest, wondering when Amy developed this new asset and why _she_ hasn't yet. She's still as flat as an ironing board for God's sake. Her hand twitches into a fist without permission and Tom stirs, opening his eyes to frown at her. "Hey. What did you stop for?" he asks.

"I... was distracted. Sorry." She shakes herself and puts her fingers in his hair again. Soothing him the way her mother used to soothe her. His muscles relax, but Tom watches her warily now, his black eyes narrowed in suspicion. "I just got distracted," she repeats.

"Hmmm." Tom's eyes look catlike, the way they slip and slide under his flickering eyelids. He is fighting the pull of her caresses, but he sighs in the end. "That feels like heaven," he slurs. Hermione looks at his lips, pink and arched slightly. He looks like the marble sculpture from the museum. _Stay still, _she wants to say. _Don't move for a moment. _Her lips burn from the heat of the sun... and something more.

She shakes herself, pulling her hand away. "My hand is tired," she says. Tom looks at her and shrugs, leaping to his feet to dive in the pool again. Hermione reads the copy of Peter Pan that she brought with them. Her eyes flick up every other page to watch Tom's chest drip with water. He catches her staring and raises his dark eyebrows expectantly. "What?" he demands. She turns red. "Something in my eye," she says loudly. She rubs at her face. "Got it." Tom looks at her strangely, but he says nothing.

When they have to go back, it is nighttime. Hermione stands up on the rickety bus to see the billions of twinkling stars outside their window, peering out of the glass and squinting up at the blue-black sky. "Be careful," Tom says irritably. But Hermione isn't careful. She stays there and Tom rests one hand casually on her waist, steadying her even though she says she's just fine. He's worried that they'll ride over a bump and she might fall on top of him. His hand is the only thing keeping her from falling. It is also making her fall.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1947 – present_

Cormac McLaggen asks Hermione out to dinner.

She tells him no.

Hermione hates herself for doing it. She hates _him _more. He's ruined her life.

She sits down in her little cupboard of a room in the Dursleys' flat, on the twin-size bed. Her feet are exhausted from running around in the high-heels that Madame Pomfrey makes all the employees wear. The high-heels that get her extra smiles and wolf whistles when she crosses the street.

She presses the heels of her palms into her tired eyes, wondering what it would be like to date Cormac. She tries to imagine it, to imagine him in a nice blue suit and in a restaurant, smiling at her as she sits down in the booth across from him. The candles are romantic. He's gotten her flowers. He wants to hold her hand, but the night's only just begun so he doesn't try to just yet…

_Bam._

Her fantasy is rudely interrupted.

Because instead of Cormac McLaggen, she sees _him. _She sees Tom holding her hand for all to see, twirling his fingers through hers, kissing the tips and sucking them into his warm-wet mouth and blowing on them so she shivers. He watches her reactions with dark eyes that laugh at her. That laugh at her weakness for him. That take delight in their toying. That pull her in like fish hooks reeling in a victim for the kill…

_I'm not anyone's toy. _Hermione yanks herself out of the daydream, viciously, although her body would like very much to do otherwise. She's not going there. Not ever again.

It's far too dangerous.

And it will get her nowhere.

She makes a grab for her painful shoes, swipes up her library card, and leaves before the haunting memories can catch up with her. Before her heart can dare to miss what it lost so long ago.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1939_

"Tom, let go! I don't want to go in-"

"Stop being difficult," Tom says coldly. He gives her a rough shove on the back and Hermione buckles, falling into the boiler room that seems much smaller now and banging her shoulder on the cement wall. She barely fits. It's screaming hot. "I'll come back for you in a few hours."

"Tom, don't," she gasps. "I'll just hide in my room or something-"

"_No_."

"Please, Tom," she says desperately. "It's so hot. Don't make me stay here."

Tom doesn't bat an eye at the crack in her voice. "Stop that. You're staying here and that's the end of it." He adds, "Don't try to call for help either. You'll get us both in trouble-"

"_Please. _I hate the dark." She is choking on the heat in the air. "Don't leave…"

Hermione lets loose a sob when the door slams shut.

It's suffocating inside. Muggy. Wet. She sweats through her smock and stays standing, crammed against the locked door and praying silently as her legs begin to cramp. She can barely breathe. After the first thirty minutes, she tries to break loose. She rams her body up against the metal door, again and again, harder and harder, until she feels dizzy and can't draw one single breath. She pounds her fists against it and screams and screams – but no one is on this floor during orientation. No one can hear her through the cement walls.

Finally, the door opens. Hermione falls onto the floor outside. She busts her lip on the tiles.

"Hermione," Tom says, surprised. Like he didn't know she was in there at all. "Are you al-?"

"Get away from me!" Hermione slaps away his hands when he reaches for her. She pushes the sweaty hair out of her face, panting. "I hate you, Tom Riddle."

Tom looks at her. His dark eyes are wide and blinking rapidly, as if trying to clear away dust. "Hermione?"

She runs. The corridors blur through her tears and her feet leap over the black-and-white tiled floors, knocking over some boy's bucket of soapy water. "Hey!" he shouts after her, shaking his wet fist. "Get back here, you lout!" When she finally reaches her room, Hermione throws the door closed so hard that the walls tremble. She curls up on the cot, shaking all over, and she screeches into her pillow. Mrs. Cole will come any minute to beat her with a wooden spoon for misbehaving.

She locked the door behind her and someone knocks on it politely.

"Go away," she shouts through the pillow, but whoever it is doesn't listen. She scowls. _He never listens._

The sound of a hairpin tinkering in the lock is followed by the door opening and closing. Slowly, footsteps make their way to her side. Hermione doesn't move her face from the pillow. She hopes it is Mrs. Cole who has come to beat her and not the alternative option. Next to her head, the bed dips slightly as someone sits. She smells sweat and soap. When Tom Riddle tries to touch her shoulder, she recoils as if shocked by an electric current. She feels him stiffen beside her. Quickly pulling his hand away, Tom doesn't say a word as she feeds angry tears to her pillow.

"What are you doing here?" she says finally, in a flat voice. Tom looks at her for a while. He is expressionless. "Well?" she barks.

"Do you really hate me?" he asks. His voice is quiet. Can he really be so calm after what he did to her?

"Yes." She frowns. "...No. I dunno." She wipes her eyes, raw and stinging, on her sleeve. Tom looks at her as if she someone new. Someone to be scared of. "I don't like it when you do things like that to me."

"Things like what?"

"Like locking me up," she mutters. "Like not letting me have any friends."

"But you don't need any other-"

"No, Tom." She meets his eyes, black as pits and swimming with an emotion she has no name for. "I do. You aren't a good friend. You hurt me."

"_No_."

"Tom, you can't-"

"No," he says and the quiet is gone. His voice scrapes in her ears like a knife. "I said _no, _Hermione. You can't have anyone else. I won't let you." He puts his face in hers and it is horrible and twisted with rage. She can barely see the beauty in Tom Riddle at that moment. It is drowning in the nightmare of his damning eyes. "If you leave me, I'll hurt your friends. I don't care who they are or what you say. I'll hurt them. I swear I will."

Hermione stares at him, saying nothing.

"Don't cry. I don't like it when you cry."

"Why?" she whispers.

"Because it makes me feel... like I did something wrong."

"Not _that_," Hermione says angrily, drying her face in vain on her sleeve. Her sleeve is soaked through already and doesn't help any. She throws her arm back down with a huff. "Why would you hurt my friends? What's... what's _wrong _with you?"

Tom stills. He is watching her face intently. She has no idea what he is looking for, not until he pulls his thumb over her cheek slowly to capture the tear on his thumb. He stares at it as if he's never seen it before. _Tom Riddle never cried as a baby. _Mrs. Cole said that. Hermione had never thought how strange that was until now. She shudders when he licks his thumb curiously. "Nothing is wrong with me," he says, but he's wrong. Something is very wrong with Tom Riddle.

Something is wrong with Hermione Granger for being his friend.

"You.. you told me that I don't know you, Tom. You're right." She takes a deep breath and dares to look him in the eyes. They are still beautiful under his dark lashes, but they put a chill in her, like a sharp draft from an open window."I don't understand you," she says.

Tom stares at her and he seems to decide something within himself. Finally, he says, "I don't like many people. Anyone really. Even you, sometimes. But I consider you... mine."

_Mine._

Hermione's mouth opens in surprise. "What?"

"I said that I consider you mine," he repeats. "That's why I, er, hide you." Tom looks lost for words for a second, as if _he _is the one who has just been told that his friend considers him a toy or pet. He picks up the limp blanket and uses it to dab at her sticky, blank face, until she is dry again. The gesture feels sweet... and wrong. "I don't want you to hate me." Tom looks at her out of the corner of his eye, bunching the soggy blanket into his fists. He stands up when she doesn't answer. "But if you do... I understand." He walks toward the door, back stiff.

"I don't." The words are out of Hermione's mouth before she can stop them. Tom pauses, but he doesn't turn around. Not yet. "Tom, I... I think I fancy you." Oh God. Why did she say that? Her face is burning like the sand at the cove. She tries to recover. "I-I mean I th-think that-" She doesn't finish. Tom cuts off the rest of her words by pulling her into his arms so hard that her bones squeak. His lips are on her forehead, curved in a perfect smile. They are even softer than she imagined.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1940_

That summer, Tom returns with his hands.

Hermione is reading _Oliver Twist _in the makeshift library when she feels them. Cool fingers move aside her incorrigible hair. They dance on her neck, playing up and down it like she's a slide. She shivers and doesn't have to look to know who is here. The tempo of breathing behind her ear is ingrained in her memory. The scent of cigarettes and paint mixed with sweat is on the air. These little qualities are third-degree burns seared into her senses. They scar.

She grins at the air.

_He's back._

"Did you miss me, Granger?" Tom Riddle whispers into her ear. With a shriek, Hermione jumps out of the chair and throws her arms around his neck, laughing in glee. He smiles into her hair.

"Yes. Horribly, you twat." She is so nervous. Can he tell? He must be able to tell by the way her face has turned into a tomato. She feels her pulse hammering against her jugular, as if she just ran to the Big Ben and back.

"Good," he says, smirking. "I missed you too, you know."

Hermione bites her lip and looks away from him, toying with the cover of her book. She found that hard to believe.

"Scoot over, will you?" Tom says briskly, shoving her toward the chair.

Hermione bookmarks her page before she sits down. Tom is very tall. She would've thought that he would stop growing already, but every summer that Tom Riddle returns to Wool's Orphanage he only becomes... farther away from Hermione. His eyes are still dark and lovely as a summer night, but they dance with a newborn wickedness that Hermione has only seen in glimpses before now. Or perhaps she is reading into him too much. Tom was not a book, he was a boy._ And if he was a book, he would be a very long, complicated one. Like a poem by Homer or a sonnet by Shakespeare._ While she is thinking, Tom suddenly startles her by yanking her into his lap. She stiffens as he twines his arms around her stomach and leans back against the chair, getting comfortable. She is painfully aware of how taut her back is, like a thread waiting to snap, and Tom seems to catch on, too.

"What's with you?" he asks, pinching her side lightly. It doesn't hurt, but she flinches. His voice softens. "Hermione."

"It's nothing," she says. Too quickly. The silence is stony. Tom waits until she twists around to face him.

"I did miss you," he says, reading her mind. It must be written all over her face, how uncertain she is about his feelings for her. Hermione hates that. "Don't you want to know how my year at Hogwarts was?" he asks.

"I suppose."

His eyes turn shrewd at the polite interest in her voice. "Perhaps later then," he says, suddenly cold. "It appears that you're quite busy with your... books."

Hermione looks away and bends down to retrieve said book. She takes a deep breath.

"Tom."

"Hm?"

"Do I…" She pauses. "Do I look any different to you?" She faces him fully.

Tom glances at her face, pursing his lips. Then he looks at the window at a bird flying by. "Er. Should you?"

Hermione is silent. After a moment, Tom looks back and winks at her. "Oh, don't be such a girl," he says tauntingly. "Of course you do. Your hair is a wee bit smaller."

_"Smaller?"_

"You know, it's less... large."

"Excuse me?"

"I like it." He laughs at the rage darkening her face, as if it delights him. Hermione growls. "I like that, too," he adds, winking.

"Didn't you get my letters?" she asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I did." Tom waits for her to fill the silence, but she doesn't. She traces the book spine of _Oliver Twist _absently, pretending it is a cat. Mrs. Cole won't let them have cats. They have fleas and disease and they shed everywhere, or so the old matron says. "They were interesting," he goes on. "Very... detailed."

"You barely wrote anything in return," she says accusingly. "Do you know how long it took me to write those letters? Oh, never mind. It isn't as though you care. You're quite preoccupied with your other life." She sounds ridiculous. Hermione can hear herself talking, sounding more and more foolish with every word that flees her mouth, but she is helpless to stop it. The months of boredom and annoyance and loneliness have coalesced into a nasty crescendo. She breathes harder and faster in the tiny, dusty library. The walls seem to be closing in on her, but they never close in on Tom. _No, Tom can get away from here, and you can't, can you? _

"I read every letter," Tom says, frowning. "I have a lot of work to do at school. It's hard for me to find time to reply and besides, there wouldn't be enough paper for me to tell you all the foolish things people do at Hogwarts. The girls..." Hermione turns rigid and he clears his throat, straightening under her. "No, it isn't like that. They're all dolts. Nothing like you, of course."

Against her will, Hermione starts to smile. A little. "Whatever do you mean?" she says coyly.

"That you're brilliant. The smartest girl I know. The smartest girl of her age."

"Oh, shut it. You don't have to be such a ham," she mutters, blushing. "But... thank you."

The crook of Tom's long neck looks rather inviting. Hermione nestles her face there and breathes in the scent of his warm skin until he sighs. She can smell the cigarette that he must have smoked outside before he came in, out of Mrs. Cole's sight. Tom tells her everything about Hogwarts. About how popular and beloved he is. He tells her of the schoolboy pranks of his friends and the plots of his enemies. She knows the names of his professors, who are besotted with him. One of them, Professor Slughorn, wants to feature Tom in an upcoming art show in London.

Hermione laughs and frowns and disapproves and snorts through it all. Tom bathes in her attention. He looks to her for reactions and kisses her cheek when she smiles. She doesn't really know why he kisses her. When she told him that she fancied him last summer, he had never said it back. He never mentioned any feelings for her in his letters either. She had quietly tucked that part of her away, but Tom was tugging it gently back into the surface of her thoughts every time that he touched her.

She tries not to react when his mouth lingers on the edge of her lip. He's teasing her, that's all, she tells herself. _He doesn't mean anything by it._

But after they return from the chapel on Sunday, Tom sneaks them out of the line streaming back into the orphanage and takes them to the empty courtyard. Daffodils have grown in patches in the dust leftover from the aftershocks of bombs in the city. He plucks a flower suddenly, holding it toward her. Hermione turns red and takes it, confused and flattered. Mostly, she is confused. No boy except for Tom Riddle has ever shown her much attention before (not the good kind of attention) and this seems... different. Tom Riddle walks very closely to her through the courtyard, only stopping when they are standing in the shadows of the building. There are no windows around them, Hermione realizes suddenly. No one is around to watch.

She is a bit excited by that.

"What are we doing back here?" Hermione whispers, peeling the petals off her flower one by one. The white petals float to the ground slowly, like tears.

Tom stretches his arms over his head. His shirt strains against the muscles in his chest, defined and not too large. What does he look like under it now? A year has gone by since they last swam at the cove. "Oh, nothing. I only wanted to see something."

"What's that?" she asks, turning her head back and forth. She sees nothing but rocks and an old, abandoned seesaw that Mrs. Cole had never had fixed.

"I meant what I said before, Hermione," Tom says, staring at the grey sky above them. It looks as though it is going to rain again. "You're not like the other girls. At Wool's or Hogwarts. Or anywhere." Hermione stares at his profile, sharp and handsome as cut crystal. His beauty is painful to look at. She feels plain standing beside him in her too-small smock and battered shoes. "I tell some of the girls at school that I care about them, but I don't really," he admits. "It's for sport."

"That's horrible of you."

"I know, but I can't very well help it. They aren't even interesting." Tom turns toward her, making her shiver when his breath tickles her neck. "I think... I care about you, Hermione."

Hermione rolls her eyes. As if her heart isn't pounding in her chest. "How do I know you're not lying? You're quite good at that apparently."

"See? That's why I like you so much. You aren't a simpering fool like... Well, never mind that." He smiles at her sweetly and Hermione knows that he is about to do something she won't like. "I want to show you something."

Hermione thinks of the other times that Tom Riddle has 'showed' her a surprise and turns cold from the bowels of her stomach. The time she tried to swim at the cove flashes through her mind and she stumbles back, but Tom is there to catch her against the building. Bricks bite into her back, but he shifts his hands to cushion her shoulders. She stares up at his face, feeling dizzy and disconnected from her own body when Tom comes too close to her. Their chest move up and down against each other. She is breathing too fast, but Tom is calm and even. His lips test her button nose, smiling when she frowns.

"What on earth are you doing, Tom?" she demands, trying to push him off. He doesn't move. He's become stronger, too.

"You'll see. Don't you trust me?" Hermione stares at him suspiciously. He kisses the corner of her upper lip, nibbling it, and suddenly, Hermione knows exactly what he is trying to do. Her heart staggers and then picks up triple-time. He must feel it throbbing against his chest. "I just want to kiss you for a while," he whispers.

"Wh-why?" she stammers. She has imagined this before, Tom Riddle kissing her, but never in a million years did she think it would _actually happen. _

"Stop talking, Hermione."

Hermione hates it when he says that, but before she can remind him Tom is bending bends down toward her. His mouth is on hers before she can blink. It's not such a big deal, but it is. His lips are as soft as she remembered them. They feel like velvet, but firmer.

He has kissed a lot of other girls.

Tom's mouth pulls and pushes hers up and down like a yo-yo. He puts one hand at the back of her neck and the other on the brick wall behind her. She still has the chest of a nine-year old even though she's thirteen and Amy Benson looks loads more woman than she does – but Tom's not kissing Amy, she reminds herself. He's kissing _her_. And she likes it.

When Tom's wet tongue pushes at her teeth, she opens her mouth, and she gasps when his tongue sweeps inside it. He's hungry. He doesn't kiss her like she's seen him kiss other girls when they're out on daily trips to the park and he sneaks away, far from Mrs. Cole's watchful eye and behind the apple tree with some blue-eyed blonde. He kisses her hard. He kisses her like the demon he really is.

_That's why he's kissing me, _Hermione thinks, afraid and breathless and excited all at once. _Because no one else can see him like this, in his real form. Because I'm his, so he can hurt me without getting in trouble. So he can kiss someone the way he really wants to kiss someone._

And Tom wants to kiss someone so that it _hurts_.

He bites her tongue until she cries out, but then he strokes it with his so she feels good as new. He crushes her to him. He traps her in his artist hands. He sweetly scrapes his nails under her blouse over her back and kisses her until she can't breathe. He peppers fast, anxious kisses down her throat and pulls down her sleeve so he can suck on her shoulder and leave red blotches there. He gravitates back to her lips like magic is pulling him there. Her mind whirls. Tom is carnivorous.

And when he's finally finished and pulls back, he doesn't say a word. He only lopes off, back to the orphanage with his hands in his pockets. Like nothing just happened.

Hermione watches him go, mystified.

She touches her tingling mouth and frowns.

* * *

"Come on, Hermione," calls Tom. The water breaks around his lean chest like blue glass when he moves. "Don't be such a baby."

"I'm not a baby!" She scowls and glares at him, but she has to look away because the sun is right behind him and burns her eyes. She regards the deep end of their secret pool nervously. She's wearing the new bathing suit Tom bought her with money he earned from his art show. It has two lace flowers on the right shoulder and green stripes. He had her try on lots of other ones in the store and model them in the dressing room, but ended up picking this one. "I just… I just can't swim."

"I'll hold you up," he says.

Hermione bites her lip. "Well…"

He smirks, triumphant, and pads away, kicking his long legs and streaming through the glassy cerulean over to her. He comes up, sparkling with water droplets and looking like someone from the cover of a fashion magazine. Hermione carefully treads toward him. The water feels colder out here.

"Don't let me go, ok," she says warningly.

Tom grins.

Taking her in his arms, he kicks them into the center of the pool and keeps them afloat where Hermione has never ventured before. The deepness scares her. She wants to go back, but doesn't say it. She doesn't want to look weak.

"Don't worry, baby," Tom murmurs, seeing right through her. Like she's made of tissue paper. He always makes her feel like that. "I've got you."

She nods. But she's still nervous.

"Here, hold your nose," he instructs and she does, squeezing her eyes shut when he dunks them. They come back up with a grand splash and she laughs, breathlessly. She's surprised by how fun it is. Tom grins at her and counts to three, dunking them again. By the seventh time they rise and dunk, she's laughing so hard her ribs hurt.

"Enough, enough!" she declares through her giggles. Tom raises a brow.

"Enough?" He feigns an innocent look and lets her slip in his arms a little, dropping her an inch. She yelps. "Enough of what? Swimming?"

"Tom." Her smile falters. "What are you-?"

He lets go.

A shriek rips itself free of Hermione's throat a mere second before she sinks through the water like a stone, choking on the dark water and into a pool that is much deeper than she originally thought. She tries to grab onto Tom's trunks, but they slip right by her.

And she's sinking.

She's drowning.

Her heart beats frantically and she kicks and thrashes for what feels like hours but is only minutes. The water offers nothing for her to take hold of except slimy seaweed. Bubbles surge out of her mouth when she screams. Black dots float around the endless water. Muddy sand crawls between her toes and something scaly flits over her foot.

_Something's down here. _Hermione's eyes widen when a shape surges toward her in the blackness. Her ears pop and her lungs sear hotter than fire from lack of oxygen, when she's so desperate her body automatically sucks in a breath only to fill her lungs up with burning seawater. She slowly goes limp. A blob with five short seaweedy limbs reaches out to her and pulls her up, up, up – up back to air.

She sputters in the daylight, coughing. Tom is laughing beside her.

"What? Did you think I'd actually let you drown?" he snickers. Hermione gasps and clings to him, holding his neck tight and refusing to let go when he tugs at her. What she'd thought to be some sort of seaweed urchin are actually his hands. "Come on, Hermione, let-"

"No!" she shouts.

Tom stops tugging and lets her hold onto him, chuckling. He likes the way she clutches him. Like she'll die without him. Like she's got no one else. "It was just a joke," he says.

"Get me out, Tom." She's shaking like a leaf. Her frizzy curls are practically a hazard. "Please, just get me o-_out_-" Her voice cracks and trembles. Tom relents.

"Alright, alright," he says, taking pity on her and petting her hair. "Hold onto me though, alright?"

She nods frantically, gripping him so hard her nails dig marks into his pale flesh. Tom winces and pulls her firmly against him. She squeezes her eyes shut so she doesn't have to look at the black water.

When they're finally back on land, Hermione races as far away from the threatening pool as she can. When Tom sits down on the beach towel beside her, she buries her face in his chest and hides there, shivering. He rubs her back. He speaks in soothing tones. He dries her off with his towel, wiping down her goosebump-ridden legs and arms. He wrings out her hair and sits them down in the sun. He kisses her neck. He kisses her mouth while she stares at the cheery blue pool, whiter than a sheet and silent as the grave.

It's perfect.

On the bus ride back, Tom watches the tight-knit buildings in the city fly by through the windows. Hermione sleeps on his shoulder, mouth parted and snoring softly. He wants to draw the city. He wants to paint the way Hermione's bottom lip juts out more than her top one, and how the skin between her eyebrows bunches, when she has a bad dream. He wants to go back to Hogwarts. He wants to put everything he sees on paper.

He looks away from the windows and catches the new kid, Dennis Bishop, staring at them with blatant disgust on his face. He arches a brow and Dennis looks away quickly, scowling. Tom makes a note to leave the younger boy...a special picture_..._before summer ends_._

He's distracted when Hermione stirs in her sleep, murmuring a dream or two. There's a strand of hair caught under her nose and he pulls it away carefully. They go over a speed bump, jolting the whole bus, and her eyes snap open. She blinks up at him, and smiles. He finds that he likes being the first thing she wakes up to, the only thing she smiles at. He does not like to share her affections.

Because he's afraid that if he does, he'll lose her forever. And Tom is determined to never lose again.


	6. Chapter 6

_London, England_  
_1941_

She still hasn't got any breasts.

Hermione frowns at her reflection. At least, she's finally grown into her 'buck teeth,' so Billy Stubbs can't call her _Beaver _anymore, she thinks to herself encouragingly. Not that Billy is here. He was adopted a while ago, didn't he?

She hates her hair.

She wishes it was straight or less big or…or _something._

Moving out of the tiny dorm, Hermione completes her chores. She has morning duties, so she can finish quickly and doesn't have to worry about meeting her daily quota for the rest of the day. She abandons the third floor and heads down to the second, where the boys sleep. She and Tom always meet there.

Hermione walks past the bleak-looking dormitories and goes up to Tom Riddle's room, surprised to see the door cracked. She hears sounds from inside. _Sex sounds. _She stops and roughs a hand through her thick hair, glaring at the door. Is Tom seriously shagging somebody in there? He's never done that before, but there's a first time for everything she supposes…

She glances around and peeks in.

She regrets it immediately.

Because Tom isn't having sex with someone – oh no, it's not that. It's entirely different, actually, and it burns an image into her brain that will stain the retinas forever.

Tom is masturbating.

She springs away and her face goes hot as a burning skillet, while she hurries off and internally screams and screams. _Oh my God. _She did not see that. He is not _doing _that. She has not just seen- _Holy, oh my – _except she did see. She still does see. Tom on his bed with both eyes clenched shut and flushed face twisted into a grimace. He had his…his thing out and his hand was around it, going up and down fast. He was panting really heavily. He was sweating too, if she recalls correctly.

_Stop thinking about it!_

She's got to distract herself. She's got to go read or do some extra chores or-

_TomTomTom_-

Hermione puts her hand to her forehead. She could have the scarlet fever for all her blushing. She isn't going to be able to look him in the eye for a week.

She really isn't.

And so for the next five days, she does something very ridiculous. She avoids Tom like he's a lethal carrier of the black plague. She goes to meals after everyone leaves. She stays away from the makeshift library. She convinces Mrs. Cole to give her extra chores that are 'coincidentally' the exact opposite times of Tom's and will put her far, far away from the boy in question. Mrs. Cole is happy to comply and separate the two. Their closeness has always made her quite nervous.

Tom notices obviously.

Every time Hermione passes him in the hall or at the chapel, she can taste his anger and frustration on the air, electric and choking like the dry summer air. But he can't say anything. Because whenever he sees her, there are others around. Witnesses. So he keeps quiet and glares at her from afar, with accusing eyes and dark scowls that make him look like a handsomer version of Heathcliff.

Hermione feels bad.

And then she feels stupid for doing this in the first place, but she just _can't _talk to him. Because she can't get the image of him doing _that _out of her… She hits herself on the head with the broom she's sweeping the lobby with. Hard. It doesn't help much.

It's Saturday and eight days since she's talked to Tom when Hermione is walking down the hall, exhausted from all the added chores she's taken over and wanting nothing more than to climb into bed. Of course, this is exactly when Tom Riddle decides to attack.

She goes into the broom closet to put away her supplies. When she goes to the very back, the door soundlessly shuts behind her and the room is plunged into darkness. She whirls around, a scream ready on her lips but stifled by the hand that flies over her mouth like a waiting mouse trap. She inhales sharply. She tastes cool skin and dried acrylics. Somebody pulls the string suspended from the ceiling and the light bulb above clicks on.

It's Tom.

Hermione sighs, relieved, but then remembers the last time she saw him and climbs out of his grip fast. Tom grabs her before she can get too far though, his dark eyes wrought with a suppressed fury and merciless. He shoves her up against the wall by the collar of her uniform and Hermione panics, because he looks dangerous, hurt, so _angry_-

"What the fuck, Hermione?" he snaps. "Why the bloody hell have you been avoiding me?"

"Sorry." She's ashamed. Her face is flaming. "It's just that I…um…I…"

"Spit it out."

"I saw you," she blurts. "By accident. I saw you…doing stuff. Six days ago. Down there." She points with her finger. She avoids meeting his eyes.

Tom is silent for a while. He says, eyes still threatening to glare holes right through her head, "What stuff?"

"M…ma…" Her tongue won't work. She tries again, blushing so hard she could set flame at any second. "Masturbating." It's a mortified whisper.

"Oh." He doesn't look nearly as affected as she thought he would. He considers her, arching a brow. "And that's what made you avoid me for a week?"

"Well, yes."

"That's it?"

A small nod. _Goodness_, Hermione thinks. When he says it like that it just sounds stupid. But then it kind of _is_ stupid in retrospective, she realizes.

"Don't do this again." His voice is softer than melted butter. His eyes are hard as ice. "You never try to get away from me, Hermione. Got it?"

"Yes," she mumbles.

"You're mine, so you can't just do whatever you want and expect to get away with it." Tom puts his hand around her neck and pulls her close, some of the tightness in his shoulder lessening when he touches her. Hermione puts her hand over his. Their fingers click together, leaving her throat. "Don't do that to me again_," _he says quietly."I thought… I thought that you'd…"

"You thought that I what?" she questions.

"Nothing. It doesn't matter."

She frowns. "I think it matters."

"I just thought that you'd left me is all." He shrugs a shoulder and traces the shape of her lips with his fingertip, lightly. "And I missed you."

"I missed you too."

"Did you?" he whispers.

"Yes." She smiles slightly. "Quite a lot."

Tom's eyes hood and he leans closer. Teasing her lips with his. "Kiss me."

"Tom…"

"Don't you know how much I love you?" He cups her cheek. He bends over her, crowding and pushing until her back hits one of the shelves. Their foreheads touch and she sees his eyes are desperate. "I love you more than anyone else ever could," he says urgently. "You need me. More than anything else in the world. Right?"

Something in Tom's gaze makes Hermione feel terribly sad, terribly lonely, terribly lost. She swallows. "Right."

Tom goes silent and his fingers make ticklish patterns up and down her side, idly. There's a twisted, mutilated thing in his heart, and it's beautiful in the way that a destructive thunderstorm is gorgeous. It obsesses over her. It obsesses over himself, over everything wrong with the world. It sends his mouth moving soft against hers.

Hermione's eyes drift open and closed at the sensations Tom creates. His breathing is heavy and his nose smooshes into her cheek. She runs her fingers through his soft hair. Tom makes a guttural sound in the back of his throat and rolls his hips into her belly slowly – and she realizes he's turned on.

At first, she doesn't know what to do as Tom works himself into a panting body over her. She watches him for a while, watches the furrowed jet-black brows and bead of sweat on his upper lip, the knife-sharp cheekbones fluttering with labored breaths and clenched perfect teeth. When he sees her staring, his eyes go black with lust. He doesn't look away.

Tom goes slow, but grinds deep and deliberate so she feels every inch of him. She has to find something to hold onto when he adjusts her so it's their hips that meet, and she grabs his shoulders and tries not to get swept right onto the floor. Somewhere between here and there, her breaths have gotten slow and heavy too. Tom closes his eyes and digs his fingers into her back, where they've snaked under her shirt and given her goosebumps. His lips seal over the corner of her jaw, kissing gently. He breathes her name. He hits her right _there _and she jumps, accidentally smacking hips with him.

Tom growls like an animal.

A shudder travels through him and Hermione knows what's happened. She stares at Tom, stunned, as he slowly comes back to himself. He looks sleepy, like lust in human form. He kisses her sweet, like she's some sort of a drug he's not adamant to wheedle off of. His favorite drug.

"Kiss me back," he murmurs. "Kiss me like you've missed me, baby."

Hermione hesitates, pushes her lips against his, and twirls her tongue back and forth. He tastes good. Like…like spearmint toothpaste, she guesses. He smells like acrylic paint and sketchbook paper under that posh cologne he and all his Hogwarts friends wear. His raven hair feels so very smooth when she softly brushes her fingers through it. She keeps her legs wrapped around his waist. Her kiss is shy, but tender.

Tom smirks, settling into her. He sucks on her bottom lip and washes her mouth with his tongue. He makes her tingle inside.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1947 – present_

"You're _laying me off?"_

"Oh, _c'est pas grave_, Errrmeanzee," sooths Madame Pomfrey. "I am layzing ev_err_yzun off."

"B-b-but why?" Hermione sputters, bewildered.

"Becauze we _ar_e simply not getting enough custahm_er_s," says her boss. Madame Pomfrey twists the keys in the lock of the shop Hermione has faithfully worked at for the past two years, for the very last time. "I am s_orr_y Errrmeanzee, but zere is nozing I can do. Ze_rr_e is no _l'argent_."

No_ l'argent? _How can there not be any money? Hermione thinks frantically. She catches Madame Pomfrey's fur coat swathed arm before the French woman can walk away and her old boss looks back at her, surprised.

"_Oui, _Errrmeanzee?"

"I…" She gathers herself and takes a deep breath, looking to Madame Pomfrey beseechingly. "I need this job, madame. Please."

"I'm s_orr_y." And Madame Pomfrey seems to mean it, as she regards Hermione and sympathetically pats her hand. "I would 'elp you if I could. You 'ave been a wonderful work_err, _t_ru_ly_. _I am going back to Paris now, 'owev_er, _to live with my son. I suggest you find you_rrr_ family, too-"

"I don't have any though," she says morbidly. "I haven't got anyone."

"Well… ze oth_er _g_ir_ls found wo_rrr_k downtown…"

"Really?" _Thank_ _God. _"Where?"

"In ze…ah…Knocktu_rrrn_ Alley."

Hermione deflates. "Prostitution?" she whispers. That'sher option now? To sell her body or let it die in the street?

Madame Pomfrey sighs. "P_err_haps, for you, zhe_rre _is something I can do. I will contact you sh_orrr_tly" At that moment, Hermione is kissed on both cheeks by Madame Pomfrey, who has flagged down a cab and bid her _adieu_. She watches the fabulous woman hurry away into the yellow car. She frowns. What does Madame Pomfrey mean by _zherre is something I can do_? And how is she ever going to go to school now? To get an English degree? How is she going to pay the Dursleys? How is she going to live?

Well, she isn't going to become a whore.

She'll die first. Literally.

Hermione bites her lip and looks around at the busy dark street. There's better work out there, surely. She just has to find out where to look. She just has to make a plan. She just has to wait for Madame Pomfrey to contact her.

She tightens her scarf and hurries away into the night, too.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1941_

When Tom sneaks into Hermione's room at night to talk and tell stories and look out of the window to make fun of the people below, Hermione has to shove the reminder that he's going back to Hogwarts soon down, down far away. It's not something she wants to think about. Not when he's here now. Not when she's so happy.

Tom twists away from the window he's been staring out of. The streetlights below cast a halo around his head, illuminating it. It's ironic, because the light makes him look like an angel when he's not one at all. He's anything _but_ that.

"We draw naked girls at school, you know," he says, in his usual shocking way. Hermione blinks. "We draw naked gents, too. Sometimes they're really old. All wrinkly." He makes a face.

"Why?" she says in bewilderment.

"To learn – or so they tell us." He shrugs a shoulder and strides over, lying down on the bed with her. He slides his hand up her nightgown, on her bare back, and traces circles centimeters away from her bra strap. He wriggles close. "What do you dream about, Hermione?"

"I don't know." She plays with a stray thread of the pillowcase while he waits. "I never remember. My parents, sometimes." _My dead mother._

"There's a type of art just for dreams." Tom's eyes glow like excited, thrilling lanterns. His enthusiasm is contagious and she finds herself grinning with him. "It's called _surrealism_. One of the best surrealists is Salvadore Dali."

"He's the one with the twirly mustache?"

He nods.

She laughs. "How interesting."

Tom smirks and sidles closer. "It is." He puts her mouth against her ear, speaking there in a secret whisper: "I'm going to be famous one day, Hermione. People will adore me everywhere."

Hermione smiles. "I know, Tom."

That seems to satisfy him. He pulls back, to put his head on her pillow where they're so close their noses touch. Tom breathes in when she breathes out. She stops smiling when he kisses her, softly. She closes her eyes when he braids his fingers into her hair and rolls over her, to steal air and replace it with his lips. He circles her navel with his thumb. He kisses her lazily. Just because he wants to.

Just because.

"Swear it." Tom is impossible to say no to. Up against his archangel looks and earnest, girl-lashed eyes, Hermione doesn't have a chance.

He always gets his way.

Tom smiles at her like a faery up to no good, lips crooked to the side in a mischievous smirk. Dark eyes sparkling. "Swear it," he repeats. "Swear yourself to me."

Hermione shifts and wraps her arms around her knees, trying to worm her way out of the subject. But Tom's too overbearing to be evaded. She tries anyway.

"Why?" she asks, facing him. He's less than an inch away from her. The wooden roots they sit inside are like a natural throne, but the tree hasn't gotten any bigger in the years they've come and gone here. _They _have though. She has to sit between Tom's mile-long legs to fit in – a factor the older boy doesn't seem to mind at all.

She remembers crying here when she was nine, but can't remember what for.

"Because I want to hear you say it." Tom tucks a frizz behind one ear, bringing her back to reality when the stubborn lock boings right back into the helpless mass wreaking havoc all about her head. "Pretty," he says and chuckles in an extremely endearing way. He's trying to get his way. To break her resolve. She knows it.

It's still _so _hard to say no though.

"Come on, baby." Tom uses a voice made of untold promises and secrets black like shadow. His arms cocoon her, chest rising and falling against her back. "Tell me."

Hermione sighs. "Tom, you're being ridic-"

"Come _on_. Say it."

She rolls her eyes up to the tangle of green and spindly braids above them, to the pollen strolling through the air like they're putting up a parade. She can barely see the ocean blue sky up above them. There isn't a cloud to see for miles around. Tom studies the varying shades of brown in her eyes while she studies the wonders of summer.

At last, she says, "I promise I'm yours, Tom."

He flashes a perfect, brilliant white smile at her. He's so handsome it hurts. Hermione flushes and wishes that she could be prettier for him, that she could look less utterly average next to him. Tom sighs and catches one of the little white fairies tap-dancing toward them, snapping two dexterous fingers around the darling thing and holding it out to her. She takes the pollen tuft carefully.

"I love you," he whispers in her ear. "More than anything else. And one day, I'll marry you and we'll have a big house and kids and be happier than hell, Hermione." He slips the ring he always wears, the one that belonged to his long-dead grandfather, onto her prim finger. He kisses her cheek.

"Maybe," Hermione says, smiling.

She lets go of the white fairy and Tom picks up his sketchbook, propping it on her raised knees and reaching around her to draw the meadow they sit in. He keeps his chin on her shoulder, breathing steadily. She watches the paper easily come to life under his hands. She sees the world through his eyes in the only way she knows how.

In his pictures.

A while later, Tom gently shakes her, and Hermione opens her eyes with a startled jerk. She looks around, bewildered to see their meadow washed dark blue with dusk. "It's time to go back," he says. He's made four sketches while she slept.

She rubs her still-waking eyes. "Did the others already start to go?"

"Not yet. But they're about to."

She nods and moves to her feet, waiting for him and linking their hands when he stands. They move in and out of the trees. She, stumbling over branches and twigs like an uncoordinated half-giant. Tom, moving swiftly as a wolf with night vision. She's envious of his grace.

Tom catches her looking and grins. "I drew you while you slept," he says randomly.

Hermione blinks. "You did?"

He hums.

"Can I see?" she asks, curiously.

Tom smirks and shakes his head.

She's affronted. "Why not?"

His face darkens. He's annoyed – whether with his drawing or her, she doesn't know. "I couldn't get your eyes right," he grumbles.

Hermione giggles and he sends her a filthy look, so she shuts up.

She keeps laughing on the inside though.

The day Tom has to go back to Hogwarts, all the loneliness and melancholy of the months spent without him rushes back to Hermione in a flash. She holds him tight outside of the orphanage. Feels his chest go up and down under her cheek and tries to memorize the rhythm, to match her breaths with his. When she does, she finds they're already in tune. They're perfect for each other.

Neither of them know it.

"You won't even know I'm gone," Tom says, like he always does, and she looks up to find him smiling at her. She can't smile back. She doesn't want to go back to being the social outcast.

"I don't want you to go." Hermione feels her ringed hand inside his, small and safe. Tom lifts his other hand and cups her cheek, giving her a kiss. She can feel his happiness. His happiness at getting to go back to Hogwarts, to all his friends and the teachers who adore him. At the knowledge she'll miss him and that she'll be miserable without him here. He loves it when she misses him. He'll never admit it, but she knows this is what he really loves about her.

How much _she _loves _him_.

* * *

_London, England_  
_the winter of 1941_

It's the coldest it's ever been out there.

Hermione stares out the frosted pane at the street beyond the orphanage's eating hall, beyond the barb-wire fence guarding them, at a concrete road coated in a slick sheet of ice without a soul on it. No one would dare go out in this weather. It's dangerous. It's ruthless. It's Christmas.

But Christmas hasn't brought Hermione anything good in years.

She tugs at a loose thread on the drab grey tunic she wears. Her birthday was in September, so she's fifteen now. Tom will be sixteen in less than a week. The only difference between this uniform and last year's is that the pant legs are half an inch shorter, she reflects. With the war in full blast, there isn't any money to be spared for an orphan's wardrobe. For anything besides weapons and tanks.

_People don't have enough money to buy bread these days, much less enough to go to a pricey dentist to have their teeth checked. _Someone once said that to Hermione. Who was it? she wonders.

The double doors to the clean but dreary cafeteria suddenly swing open and she looks up – the only kid who does – and she sees Mrs. Cole with a tall, pale handsome boy behind her standing in the entrance. Her heart skips a beat. She blinks twice, hardly daring to believe it.

_He's back._

She stands, a huge smile stretching her lips instantly when Tom glides in. He's wearing the usual garb, but with slightly broader shoulders. His eyes are all wrong though. They crackle and sting a silent storm – one that only she can see. They snap to hers and make her smile drop.

He's furious.

Tom sits down without a _Happy Christmas, _without a word, without a sound. He glares slowly at the kids around them and she wants to know why he's back so early, what's happened to make him so angry. She knows better than that though. When Tom's like this, it's better not to say anything at all, so she just eats supper and reads the book she brought, _Anna Karenina, _while Tom snaps the pencils filling his pockets to pieces and grinds his teeth. He's good at keeping most of his emotions inside. He's always been good at that.

She can tell he's itching to touch her.

He'll have to wait until their alone though. Part of her is relieved they aren't alone right now.

Because the others give them weird looks when he holds her hand in chapel, when he kisses her eyelashes and puts his chin on her knee. Mrs. Cole hates that they act the same way as they did when they were small children. Touching and holding hands and whispering in each other's ears. She hates Tom's fierce protectiveness of Hermione Granger. He won't even let the matron herself speak to the girl without his direct supervision. He's like a guard dog with a mean bite, wordlessly intimidating, always watching for the smallest sign of a threat.

Most of all, everyone wants to know what it is that Tom Riddle whispers to Hermione Granger. Everyone wants in on the secret.

_There isn't any secret though, _Hermione thinks, pulling away from the tales of Anna and her tangly love endeavors for a moment. _There's nothing at all._

She glances at Tom. Or is there?

She doesn't ask. Tom would never tell anyway.

Tom hasn't touched a piece of paper in days.

_Something's happened, _Hermione thinks, again and again. She's so worried she gnaws her lip until it's chapped horribly and burns like fire. _Something bad. What's happened, Tom?_

She has to know.

_Kiss. Kiss. _Tom inches his lips up and down the back of her neck while she reads, arms tight as boa constrictors where they coil around her stomach. His legs are folded-up like tree roots and keep her inside, close to him, where she'll never get away. He blows on her skin where he's got it wet with his tongue so he can watch goosebumps spring into visibility. Playing with her gives him satisfaction, especially when he's bored. She tries to ignore this.

_Kiss. Kiiiisss._

Her eyes flutter. She realizes it, shakes herself, and keeps on reading. But the words slip and slide now.

Just like Tom's lips.

His arms leave her for a moment and there's rustling. Then Tom is back against her, bare-chested and lifting her nightgown so she feels that bareness against her back. Breathing hot in her ear. Sucking her earlobe into his mouth. Hermione's breathing hitches and her eyes roll back. She feels something new, down below. Between her thighs. A little ache.

Tom's hand shoves her book to the floor, comes over her hip, and flips her so they're face-to-face. His eyes demand everything from her. She can feel how much he wants her. Staring at him, Hermione thinks Tom was born wicked.

She stops him before he can reach for her clothes.

"Tom, what's wrong?"

He raises a brow. "Besides the fact you're not naked yet?"

"You're sad." _Tragically sad._ Hermione tentatively traces her thumb along the noble outline of his jaw. He doesn't stop her, so she cups his cheek fully and looks him in the eye. It's like getting to touch a Bengal tiger. It's heart-racing. It's terrifying. "I can tell," she says.

He smirks. "Oh?"

She nods.

Tom's smirk fades. He jerks his head away, because he hates it when she catches him pretending. He hates showing her what he really is. He hates what he really is.

Whatever that is.

"What's happened?" she queries. He doesn't answer, but continues to leer at the ceiling. "Come on, Tom." She pats his cheek, trying for lightness. "You can tell me."

His jaw flexes. "Later," he says, quickly, and Hermione realizes he talks so fast because his voice is rough like sandpaper. Tom hates crying more than anything. He'd never cry in front of her. He'd never let himself look so weak.

"Do you… do you want me to hold you?" she asks.

Tom meets her eyes with swimming black ones that dry the instant he blinks. He's craving her touch and her eyes and he nods stiffly.

They lay down shoulder-to-shoulder. Then Tom – six foot two now and most definitely no longer a virgin – wriggles over and puts his head in the crook between her neck and shoulder, sighing quietly. Wrapping around her like a clingy spider monkey. Mumbling all the misdeeds the world has done him into her ear. Turning into a child for the night. Fitting like a jigsaw piece.

"They expelled me," he finally says hours later, in a cold flat voice that's nothing like Tom Riddle's suave timber. It's the voice of hatred. Tom's fingers skim up and down her spine possessively. Hermione feels the rage inside him quake and roar, large enough to _swallow _the storm.

"How come?" she says curiously.

"This little brat found out I was a scholarship student and decided to tell everyone in the whole bloody school. All my friends…abandoned me." He pauses, and she knows he's going to tell her the real reason he's been banished. The bad thing. "So I had to make her pay, Hermione. She ruined my life."

"Who?"

"Myrtle something. It doesn't matter now though, does it?"

A violent chill goes through her.

Tom pouts. "What are you looking at me like that for? I'm not the bad guy here. _She _turned me in, remember?" His voice drops to a mischievous murmur. "And it's not like Dumbledore could find enough evidence to really blame me. Only enough to get me kicked out."

_How could you, Tom? _Hermione's stomach knots and she searches Tom's dark eyes, but only to find nothing telling there. He hides his secrets too well. "What did you do?" she demands at last, although she thinks she already knows. Flashes of Billy Stubbs and his dead rabbit Babbity whip through her mind in horrible flashes. Her palms sweat.

Tom snickers and rolls on top of her. His eyes glow in the dark like a cat's. Reflecting the city lights outside so they look metallic and flat, like an animal's. He grins slowly, gazing down at her. "Now why would I tell you that, Hermione?"

As soon as Hermione hears a knock at her window, she jumps up and opens it to see Tom hanging on the eave down below, panting from the climb up and exhausted from the secret job he keeps up at a pawnshop called Borgin & Burkes. He's got a backpack slung over one shoulder. She throws down a hand and he grabs it, scrabbling into her bedroom fast.

He catches his breath for a few minutes once he's in, dropping his backpack on the floor and wiping off sweat. He's grinning. He says, impressively, "I quit."

"Why?" Hermione asks, bewildered.

Tom shrugs. "I made all the money that I wanted to make." He peers out her open window, down at the dark street below, and he takes a deep breath of the crisp night air. It's April. Thus, it's rainier than usual and everything in London is covered in a fine spray of mist just to prove it. Hermione goes up beside Tom when he waves her over. He automatically winds his fingers through hers.

"What's the backpack for?" she says.

"It's got my money in it," Tom replies, "and a few other things."

Hermione nibbles her lip. "Are you ever going to draw again?"

Tom smiles like Peter Pan. "Naturally."

She nods. Secretly relieved. Outwardly, just as nonchalant as he is.

"I need you to do something for me," he says suddenly – softly – and turns to face her. "I need you to make sure Mrs. Cole doesn't leave her office tonight."

"Why?"

"Just do it for me." Tom reaches into his pocket, pushing past pencils and extracting a cig and lighter. He lights up. Hermione turns her head away. She hates the smell of nicotine.

"Will you do it?"

She rolls her eyes. "Of course I will."

Tom looks at her sideways. He's dashing as a black knight in burning armor. He flicks his cig out the window, where it hits a furious passerby down below.

Hermione averts her eyes, looking up at the night sky and stars. "Where are you sneaking out to anyway?"

Tom shrugs. "Around."

She nods.

He's still looking at her. He gives her a hand a tug and keeps tugging until she's up against his side, where he puts his cold hand under the back of her shirt and makes her jump. "You're freezing," she says, surprised. He snickers.

Whispering in her ear, he retorts, "You're hot."

Hermione blushes and he nips the skin under her ear, turning her head toward him so he can kiss her mouth. He opens her lips with his and sweeps his tongue inside, pushing her up against the window sill. She gasps and grabs his shoulders, holding on tight. She prays Tom won't drop her. She moans when Tom firmly rubs his fingers under her skirt.

He smirks. "You're definitely hot here, baby."

Hermione bites her lip and moves against his hand, seeking relief. He laughs and pulls away. Leaving her hanging. Again.

He always does that.

She curses herself for falling for the same trick again.

"Make sure Mrs. Cole doesn't leave her office," Tom tells her again, eyes no longer wicked but serious. Hermione scowls at him.

"Why should I?" she says, cross. He can be such a jerk.

Tom pouts at her. _Blast, _Hermione thinks, because he's got his angel eyes on and she can feel her anger melting like hot butter already. Bloody angel eyes…

"Please?" he sings. "For me?"

She's going to regret this. She just knows it.

"Oh whatever." Hermione huffs and gets up, walking over to the door so she can sneak out to the matron's office. Tom catches a lock of her hair, stopping her before she can get too far.

Hermione looks back at him, irritated. "What?"

Tom blinks innocently. "I only wanted another kiss." He steps closer and she can see the tiny smirk that's curling his perfect mouth, that's hidden behind his cherubic façade. She doesn't react when he pecks her lips. "Kiss me back," he commands.

"No."

Tom grins. "Come on. You know you want to." He weaves his fingers through her hair and hums into her mouth, tickling it.

Hermione yanks herself away. "Stop it, Tom," she snaps.

He rolls his eyes. "Whatever. It's not like there aren't other willing parties," he says, and this last comment is a blow that hits her hard. She stares at Tom, anger replaced by stunned hurt.

"You…you wouldn't." She tries to smile, like it's a joke, but fails miserably. She searches his cold eyes. "You wouldn't cheat on me."

Tom's brows rise. "Cheat on you?" he repeats, amused. "How can I cheat on you? We're not even together."

Hermione stops breathing. The ring on her finger burns like flaming coals.

"I…" She clears her throat, because her voice is cracking. She looks away quickly. Tom is just saying this because he wants to hurt her. She's seen him do it to other people. She knows him. She knows how he is.

But it still stings.

"I'm gonna go," she finally says.

Tom snorts. "Go? Go where? I didn't say you could go anywhere."

Hermione makes to walk past him, blinking her stinging eyes rapidly, but he snatches her back. He grabs her chin and his beautiful face is in hers, twisted with fury. "_Don't walk away from me," _he hisses.

She glares at him through angry tears. "Let me go."

"No."

"Let me go, Tom!" she shouts and his eyes go wide, darting to the door and back to her.

"Be quiet-"

"No, not until you get off me, you pompous idiot-"

Tom sneers and clamps his hand over her mouth to shut her up. She keeps on yelling into his palm, throwing punches at him that he deflects effortlessly. He pulls her into him, pinning her arms between his hard body and her soft one, muffling her enraged screams. He stares at her with those cold eyes, jaw taut and temper thin like a fraying cord. At that moment, Hermione truly believes he doesn't feel anything at all. He's a monster. Her best friend is a monster and - oh God - does she hate him.

"I'm leaving, Hermione," Tom says quietly. "I can't stay here anymore."

Hermione freezes. She breathes hard and he slowly pulls his hand away, watching her cautiously. She looks down at the floor, at her ratty shoes and their untied laces. Two tears wriggle free and plop onto the dull wooden boards. She sucks in a ragged breath and it comes back out as a sob.

She doesn't know what to feel. Should she be relieved because he's going? Yes, she should. But she's not. She only feels terribly lost and empty.

Seeing her cry, Tom smiles. He smiles because he's gotten to her. He's gotten what he wants. Her pain makes him feel invincible. Hermione looks up and her eyes dry at the sight of his expression, which he quickly schools into a mask of false empathy. But she's already seen how he really feels. What he really is.

Tom touches her wet cheek. Hermione stays still. "You know I love you."

She says nothing.

He pulls her into him, wrapping his long arms around her. Kissing her on the head. "You're sorry, aren't you?" he murmurs. "For making me mad?"

The hairs on Hermione's body are standing on end. She nods slowly and feels hollow inside.

He whispers in her ear. "Now when I kiss you, you'll kiss me back."

* * *

_somewhere in the Atlantic_  
_1947_

_Now when I kiss you, you'll kiss me back._

Hermione launches out of sleep, gasping. Her heart pounds away like a miner's hammer. Sweat drenches her back.

_You'll kiss me back…_

It's the last thing he ever said to her.

She touches her lips. They remember _his. _Tom's lips on hers, though, are nothing but a ghost she wants to forget. Nothing but illusions in pretty, silver-tongued wrapping. Because that night at the orphanage, while she'd sat around watching Mrs. Cole's office door and made sure their matron did not come out, Tom had snuck out with his backpack. And he hadn't come back.

Ever.

Hermione remembers spending the next day worrying herself sick about Tom, wondering if something bad happened to him, feeling helplessly guilty when Mrs. Cole didn't see him in the eating hall or in his bedroom or in the makeshift library and finally went searching for him. Feeling crushed when she heard Mrs. Cole and the other helpers discussing _runaways._

She'd been betrayed.

She had been used and discarded, like a toy someone had grown bored of.

Tom said he'd come back for her, but he never did. He just took his kiss and left her there, in an orphanage where no one talked to her and kids called her _slut freak witch you shameful whore _behind her back. She remained there for another three years, until she aged out and found work at Madame Pomfrey's. It's been six years since she's seen him.

_I don't miss him, _Hermione reminds herself fiercely. _I have no reason to miss someone like that._

She shakes herself of these haunts, pulls her hair back into a ponytail, and stands up in the swaying cabin. The ship she's on raises and bows over the rocky waves recklessly. She's leaving England and all her bad memories with it. She's said her goodbyes to the Dursleys (who were very much relieved to be rid of her, naturally) and she's bought a one-way ticket to her new home.

She has no idea how she's going to go on from here.

But there's a promise in the place she's headed. It lies in a mysterious host, a customer of Madame Pomfrey's former shop who lives overseas and was informed of Hermione's struggles by her once-boss. Madame Pomfrey, through letters, has assured Hermione that this host – a Mr. Malfoy – is very generous and more than happy to let her stay at his home until she can get back on her feet. So now all Hermione's hopes rest on the address Madame Pomfrey has given her.

She peers out of the foggy window, wiping away the condensation to examine what lies outside. It's too dark to see much besides rolling Atlantic and pitch-black depths. The deepness of water terrifies her and she moves away, sea sickness crashing in on her body for the fourth time since she boarded. How close are they? she wonders.

She'll have to wait for morning to find out.


	7. Chapter 7

Part 2 - the Starving Artist

"_Many of the pictures I painted were not beautiful.  
For what, then? For a truth I did not know how to put into words.  
For a truth I could only bring to life by means of color and line and texture and form,"  
_Chaim Potok, _My Name is Asher Lev_

* * *

_1947_  
_New York, New York_

She's here.

She's _actually _here. In the Big Apple. New York. Manhattan.

It's nerve-wracking.

Hermione looks out the windshield of the swanky car she's riding in, at the fringe of pine trees and tower-like iron gates guarding an even bigger mansion behind them. They're on Long Island, in a neighborhood where houses are the size of the Chrysler building and lawns wide as Big Ben is tall separate old money families into neat little rows. She can't believe she's going to be living here.

Somebody from the other side sees them coming and opens the gates, which part backward in slow, graceful sweeps. She's so rattled her hands are shaking. She sticks them in her pockets to hide it. The mansion is roaring rich-gorgeous.

The driver comes around to let her out. Hermione sends him a tentative, jittery smile and steps onto the walk. The grounds are lush green and peppered with austere lawn ornaments, marble statues and fountains and a long dock far off that overlooks the glittering blue bay. There's a pool in the back. The mansion – no, not mansion; _castle _– is all bleach-white and stone entablatures and French doors. Butlers and maids flutter everywhere, like insect netting caught in the breeze.

_How much money does this guy have? _she wonders.

The front doors open before them. And it's time to find out.

Someone, somewhere, is playing the pipe organ. The music of it swells and echoes through the castle-like manor. Pipe organ is usually heard in church, but whoever plays it now doesn't make Hermione feel like she's in Sunday service. Better yet, she feels like she's stepped into the heart of a theater, a stage set ready for the play to begin.

But that's just paranoia talking, surely.

Surely?

The butler escorting her doesn't say a word. Hermione looks around, at the art spread throughout the mansion in gilded frames taller than her height times two and heavier than cargo boat anchors. She sees collector's items, abstract sculptures, wooden African masks, Mexican alebrijes propped up on shelves, teardrop-crystal chandeliers hanging from domed ceilings and photographs of places she's never even heard of. She doesn't see any pictures of people. No portraits of Mr. Malfoy. No family either, as far as she can tell.

But she's read about her new host. He's got family, stinking rich family who are bred to work the world of business and strike gold easy. Mr. Malfoy himself works on Wall Street, specializing in bonds with a business degree from Oxford under his belt.

Hermione wonders what Mr. Malfoy is like.

"Here you are, Miss Wilkins," says the butler, speaking for the first time since she's arrived. And getting her name wrong. His voice is rather croaky, thin hair graying, and he wears fine white gloves, as if he's just popped out of an Emily Brontë novel. He puts her trunk on the floor. "If you require anything, just let one of the help know and they'll retrieve it for you immediately. Mr. Malfoy has taken the liberty to purchase you a wardrobe. It is in that closet there." He points. Hermione, stunned, looks where he indicates to see a door leading to who-knows-what. _That's… gracious, _she thinks.

Finished, the butler bows stiffly in goodbye, but before he can leave she speaks up.

"Um, excuse me, but where exactly…" She hesitates. "I mean, where is Mr. Malfoy?"

The butler blinks at her blankly. He's clearly offended that she doesn't know already. He says, croaky voice laced with thinly veiled disdain, "In the city, of course, Miss-"

"Granger," she quickly supplies.

He nods. "Mr. Malfoy is there on business."

_On business. _Hermione thinks this is a reasonable answer and nods. She'll have to thank Mr. Malfoy for his hospitality later.

"Will that be all, Miss Granger?" the butler says, reminding her of his presence. Hermione is startled by the request. It's odd to be waited on, beck and call…

"No, I'm alright," she says awkwardly. "Um, thank you, Mr..."

"Kreacher," the froggish butler sneers.

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Kreacher." She smiles quickly, uncertainly. The butler barely makes an effort to hide his revulsion at her fumbling and makes his departure with a loathing grumble.

_It's so big. _Hermione looks around at the grand room he's left her in. Her new bedroom. It's a polished paradise of some sort, with gleaming hardwood floors, creamy peach-colored furniture and a balcony offering a flawless view of West Egg and the city skyline. She can still hear the pipe organ player electrifying the halls of Malfoy's mansion.

This is nothing like any place she's lived in before. Not like the cellar the Dursleys let her stay in, not like the orphanage where…

She shakes off that last thought.

Hermione sits down and curls her hands around a cup of green tea one of the maids has brought her, warming them. She's cold despite the summer heat pervading this place. She's exhausted after the trip here. She's going to need to convert her money tomorrow morning. She'll have to find Malfoy later, she thinks again, to thank him for letting her stay here.

_Why did he buy me clothes? Why has he even invited me here? He's just a stranger._

She writes it off as excessive kindness. Madame Pomfrey _did _say that Mr. Malfoy is an extremely generous man. She meditatively sips the green tea. It doesn't help the queasy flip-flopping in her belly though.

She closes her eyes. Fresh start, she reminds herself. _Fresh start._

A week goes by, and another and another. Hermione doesn't find Malfoy the first two nights of her stay, and soon after, she abandons this task to look for work. She forgets about her quest to track down the mysteriously absent host in her search for it.

But the States don't seem to be the American Dream they're all chalked up to be.

_Nobody wants to hire a woman in this century. _Hermione scowls at the dinner set before her, pushing the delicious contents around on her plate and making a mess of them. She's dissatisfied. She'd had higher hopes when she first came here. Those hopes, however, are already burning out like flames in a dying candelabra.

Malfoy won't let her stay in his house forever.

_There has to be work somewhere, _she thinks. _Things have to get better._

She sighs.

Lost in thought, Hermione mulls over Malfoy – Abraxas Malfoy, as she's discovered with the help's assistance – and she wonders why she never sees him. His staff say it is because he's a business man and as such is always in the city or in his office, making important phone calls, going to meetings, et cetera. He can't be disturbed. He returns to his mansion long after she falls asleep.

He could be a ghost for all she knows.

She's lost her appetite. Hermione shoves back her plate, stands, and looks around at the austere yet elaborate interior she has slowly grown accustomed to over the few weeks she's been here. And her heart stops.

Because just behind the doorway, two _eyes _are staring at her.

She blinks – and they're gone.

_Abraxas Malfoy. _She knows it's him. But why was he watching her? Why didn't he come in and introduce himself? Moreover…how long did he stand there in the darkness, staring? She frowns and touches her cheek.

She's blushing furiously.

It's been one whole month that she's lived in Malfoy's mansion. Hermione can't find work. She finds herself thinking back to the night in the dining room, when she caught Mr. Malfoy eerily watching her as she ate dinner. Mr. Malfoy who bought an entire wardrobe for her – a wardrobe that's worth thousands and thousands of dollars – and who lets her stay at his million-dollar mansion out of the kindness of his heart. He even purchased a typewriter for her when she mentioned to a servant that she wishes she could spend her weekends writing, but that she'd been running out of notebooks and kept drying out all her pens.

He'd disappeared too fast for her to say hello.

She is sure Malfoy is avoiding her now. She muses the possibility of his being a shut-in. Perhaps he is some sort of introverted hermit who hides behind his staff and fancies studying people's eating habits…? No, that doesn't make sense. He can't possibly make as much money as he does from home.

She must find Mr. Malfoy then. And confront him.

So late at night on a slow Saturday, she sets out.

As luck will have it, however, Malfoy's mansion is even larger than she originally thought it to be. It's vast and labyrinth-like, with never-ending halls and misleading footsteps that could be a cook or stray servant just as easily as it could be her enigmatic host. Hermione spends the entire night trailing around aimlessly, trying to find the office Malfoy apparently works in, to find _him. _But she doesn't reveal a shred of evidence that proves he even exists.

Long after midnight, she returns to bed – plush and splendid with goose-down pillows and silk duvet – but she's wary. She wears the velvet pyjama set supplied to her by Mr. Malfoy and it makes her skin itch, her resolve solidify. She must leave. It's not safe here.

Something isn't right here.

Kreacher, who Hermione has always thought hated her with all his amphibian-ish guts, is strangely agitated when she tells him of her plans. He persuades her to sit down and wait while he informs 'the master of the house' of her departure. She reluctantly agrees.

Some fifteen minutes later, Kreacher returns, hopping in fast and looking anxious. His relief at finding she hasn't left yet is extremely apparent. "M-M-Mr. Malfoy," he croaks pathetically, "implores you to stay. He apologizes that your schedules conflict so, but he would hate to see you on the streets-"

"Those are his words exactly?"

"Yes."

"Then no." Hermione stands, taking up her trunk again. Kreacher gives a rather displeased ribbit at the sight. "If he won't see me, I can't stay here anymore. I'm sorry, Mr. Kreacher. I just don't feel comfortable…"

"Blah!" Mr. Kreacher is so wretched that Hermione would not be surprised at all if he suddenly started to attempt a butchering of himself by the aid of a nearby lamp. But instead he slaps his bald head and says, quickly, "Wait, wait a moment, Miss Granger. Just one moment."

Hermione hesitates.

Kreacher smiles widely – she's never seen him smile before, she realizes, and it's a wink scary – when she agrees and he hops off again, hobbling away in a hurry. She sighs.

Another number of minutes later, he returns.

"Mr. Malfoy agrees to meet with you," Kreacher gasps. He's about to keel over from exertion. "In two days' time, you two will dine at the-"

"Two days?" she says skeptically. Kreacher's greyish features twist in displeasure at the interruption. "That's an awfully long wait."

"Mr. Malfoy is a very busy man, Miss Granger. Surely, you can understand that."

She bites her lip. And although a part of her tells her to get out of there now, to not give this fishy bait a chance, another part of her calls her _coward _and makes her stay. And then there is another thought, a thought that fears _he _might see her with someone else, that _he _might – just _might_ – be the one watching…

These last musings are ridiculous however.

"Alright, two days." Hermione is firm. She's leaving the past behind her – or trying to.

Kreacher croaks in relief.

* * *

Malfoy is not what she expected.

He's not warm. Or kind. Or gracious or generous or charismatic or any of the things Madame Pomfrey has said he is.

He's completely average actually. And a bit of a big, fat snob.

All in all, he's disappointing.

"I trust that everything is to your liking, Miss Granger?" Malfoy says, after a pregnant pause in which he thinks very hard and squints at the silk napkin in his lap like he's looking for a secret code to be disguised there. Hermione confirms this. Malfoy goes back to the napkin squinting business.

"And…ah…you are content?" he asks.

"Yes, quite." Hermione frowns at the oddly phrased question, but shakes it off. She needs to be gracious. "Thank you, by the way, Mr. Malfoy. I appreciate your hospitality very much in allowing me to stay at your home. I promise I'll be out of your hair by next month-"

"No, no!" shouts Malfoy, astonishing her. It's the first time he's shown any emotion beside Stuck-Up Robot. His white-blonde hair looks even paler against his suddenly flushed face. "That's quite unnecessary. I mean, you're welcome to stay as long as you want, Miss Granger," he adds hastily.

"Oh, um… thank you?"

It's very awkward after that.

"So." She scrambles for a conversation topic. "You are very busy with your meetings?"

"Yes. Er, quite busy." He squints at his toilette again. He seems agitated, but he's trying to hide it. Hermione's eyes narrow.

_He's faking. Someone's putting him up to this. _She's not sure how she knows it, but she does. She doesn't know what the purpose of this pretending is, but she knows there is one. She can see this Abraxas Malfoy is a liar – and a very poor one at that.

"Thank you for lunch, it was lovely," she says pleasantly when the luncheon is finally over. "I'm sorry to have imposed on your time, Mr. Malfoy. I know how very busy you are…" she trails.

Malfoy looks away. "Er, yes. Well, it's not really any trouble. Your company is…enjoyable." He's lying through his teeth.

"And yours." She smiles. "Goodbye, Mr. Malfoy. Maybe I will see you at your home again?"

_Again. _It's a test. Because if he's really the man who owns the house she's currently staying in, who has bought her a wardrobe of clothes and whose watched her dine once upon a Thursday night, then her comment will fluster him. She watches closely.

But Malfoy only pastes on a false cheery smile.

"Yes. Maybe." And he stands, quickly shaking her hand and parting with obvious relief. She watches him leave the restaurant.

She's being scammed.

Because this Mr. Malfoy is most certainly not her host and her real host is most certainly not at all what he seems to be. So what's the purpose of all this? Why the theatrics, the unnecessary lies? The mystery? Who is the real Mr. Malfoy?

She doesn't know, but she intends to find out.


	8. Chapter 8

Hermione puts down the New York Times, letting loose a soft yawn. The work postings aren't promising, but she'll apply to them all anyway. She's sick of being useless, of sitting around in a mansion with nothing to do or occupy her time with. She walks to the balcony and studies the Hudson River. It is smaller and greener than River Thames. The New York City skyline is a beautiful congested backdrop against it.

"Hello?" someone says from behind her.

At the interruption, Hermione jumps and turns around. The bedroom is still empty. She frowns at the closed door. _Who said-?_

"Yes_,_ yes, speaking," the same voice says. It sounds like a young man. Too young to be Kreacher, the grouchy butler. The voice is coming from above her on the balcony. She steps outside and looks up at the wooden slats of the balcony above her, where the shadow of a man strides back and forth across the floor. She can see his feet pacing through the mahogany slots. The underside of shiny, buffed shoes gleam in the channeled sunlight at her. _Malfoy, _she thinks. _The _real _Malfoy._

"…Yes, it's coming along rather quickly," her mysterious host is saying as he walks back inside. "…shall be ready in at least four days…"

Hermione stays where she is frozen on the balcony, hoping he'll come back so she can finish eavesdropping. A door closes and locks above her. Bullocks.

_I know where his room is now. _The new knowledge gives her an idea. Maybe she could go there tonight when Malfoy disappears on one of his midnight rendez-vous. She would like to know who the real Malfoy is and why he won't show himself. Why is he so keen on keeping his identity a secret? Even his staff lied straight to Hermione's face about him. To go to the lengths of setting up a decoy to deceive her through that conman she met the other week was so strange...

There must be something in his room.

Hermione has never been the sort to break rules frivolously, but desperate times call for desperate measures. She frees a brass pin from her hair, twirling it in her fingers. Before she ever came to Wool's Orphanage, the twin brothers of the Weasley family that she had worked for had taught her a thing or two about picking locks. Years have passed since she tried her hand at lock-picking, but perhaps locks are like bicycles, she thinks. You never forget how to ride a bicycle... or how to be a sneak.

* * *

Ten minutes past the clock striking twelve, Hermione slips out of her bedroom and makes her way to the fourth floor.

The lock is not like a bicycle. She fumbles with her pin in the lock until it breaks in half in her hands, clattering softly to the floor. "Well, I'll eat a hat," Hermione mutters to the dark hallway. She keeps her ears pricked for the sound of Kreacher lurking in the stairwell, but he is sleeping in his quarters. She takes a second pin out of her hair. The artful bun that she'd wrestled her frizzy hair into is collapsing around her ears like a deflating soufflé. A loose curl tickles her neck like the tongue of a snake. She shivers in the empty mansion. It seems so cold without any of the help around. Jamming the pin in the lock again, she twists it back and forth gently, gently. _Click... click-click... _The bolt thuds as it is shoved aside by the tin. _Yes!_

Hermione grins as the door to Malfoy's room swings open before her. She checks the corridor twice before stepping inside.

Inside, the bedroom is not a bedroom at all... unless Malfoy doesn't sleep in a bed. Hermione shuts the door behind her soundlessly. She looks around, taking in the paint-splattered walls and rolls of canvas, the bunches of half-used oil tubes littering the floor. _It's an art studio._ Her eyes fall on the balcony where Malfoy had stood earlier that day. A tattered sketchbook lying off to the side pushes unwelcome memories at her, but she doesn't dwell. The studio feels eerie enough without an extra dose of paranoia. She has never stepped foot in here before and yet it feels... _familiar._

"Focus," Hermione whispers to herself. "He isn't here. You're alone."

Hermione starts looking. She'd previously thought it would be easy to find dirt on this host of hers, that she'd just fling open a filing cabinet and somehow stumble upon his birth certificate or something. She sees how stupid this idea is now. Because there aren't any papers in here – none except for the ones in sketchbooks – and there isn't anything to allude to a person's identity either. She huffs and sits down on a cardboard box of terracotta clay, stumped.

It is now that she remembers what all artists do to their work with a burst of revelation…

_They sign it._

She spins around, looking about at the pieces splayed haphazardly throughout the room and searching for a complete one, one that the artist would have signed already. She finds a huge oil on canvas propped on an easel. It's an abstract painting of triangles and squares she can't even begin to see the meaning behind – but then, she's never understood art. She's a bookworm, not an art junkie.

She looks down, to the bottom right corner, and sees a name scribbled in black ballpoint pen there. _Voldemort, _it reads. She frowns.

Who the devil is Voldemort?

On the opposite side of the studio, the balcony doors rattle sharply, like the hammers of hell are trying to smash their way inside. Hermione jumps a foot into the air at the sound. She looks outside, heart pounding, but it's only a summer lightning storm. The Hudson is swirling and churning, the grey air humming above it rocked with electricity.

_Calm down, _she tells herself, even as cruel terror threatens a lunar eclipse. _It's just the weather. Just a little rain._

Hermione looks away and back at the signature. _Voldemort. _She traces the letter ridges with the tip of her forefinger. What an odd name.

The balcony doors rattle again, at the same time lightning strikes the river, but this time they tear open wide. Hermione swears when a gust of blistering wind tears inside the studio, sending everything askew and toppling works of art upward and wayward and here and there without a care in the world. She scrambles to her feet, running over to grab the doors, forcing them shut and pulling the lock fast. Papers flutter to the floor gently behind her.

She turns around, blanching at the mess. Her eyes catch on an envelope.

Hermione bites her lip and checks the closed door again. She goes over, picking up the envelope and examining it. It's already been opened and there's only the return address on the label. It's from London. She takes out the letter.

_Voldemort,  
I cannot thank you enough for your brilliant creations. My sister is thrilled with her portrait and I hope you are thrilled with your side of the bargain as well. Is the locket to your liking? If not, do not even think of trying to send it back. I am hardpressed to ever relinquish one of your fine pieces in exchange! I do love them so, nearly as much as the fellow behind them._

_On another note, I am flying in from London especially for your show come July. Save me a dance, won't you?_

_Yours always,  
Hepzibah Smith_

Hepzibah Smith? Hermione has heard of that name before. Hepzibah Smith is a famous art collector, notorious for her habits of snatching up the famous and beautiful no matter what the price may be. Her money knows no bounds, according to the magazines. And apparently, her love for Voldemort knows no bounds either.

July... That's only a week away. Hermione returns the letter to its place, glancing at the grandfather clock in the corner. Hours have already passed, she should be going before one of the morning staff catches her snooping. But how can she find the exact details of Voldemort's art show? It would be the perfect, if only, opportunity to meet him.

She leaves Voldemort's room, locking the door behind her.

* * *

_July 1st 1947_  
_downtown Brooklyn, New York_

The art show is rather... pretentious... in Hermione's opinion.

The lighting is so low she must squint to see the painting around her. A jazz band plays softly from a shady corner, the lead singer mumbles into a microphone. Rich oak floors and butter-yellow paneling strike a sharp contrast with the dreary, dark pieces mounted on them. Hermione does not dwindle on the art. Incredible as it is, the pieces don't interest her. She hates art the way a stubborn student hates reading. She is only interested in the maker.

Voldemort.

But where on earth is he?

Hermione asks the strangers, the extravagantly dressed wives and paparazzi snapping away their clunky cameras and the suave critics in embroidered scarves and sharp jackets. Some laugh at her question, like she's made a funny joke. Others scoff and sneer at her – but most of them simply say they don't know. Most don't even know what Voldemort looks like.

She sighs, frustrated. This is proving to be a tedious task indeed.

It's two-thirty when Hermione sees - at last! - a familiar face. For stalking in the dimly-lit corner of the showroom is no one other than…

_Malfoy._

Hermione tucks a stray curl back behind her ear nervously (though it just stubbornly comes undone again) and she gathers herself, walking over to the man. She tries to talk herself into being assertive – tough. There's information she needs, and nothing shall stop her from getting it. She draws back her shoulders and jabs Malfoy harshly in the back, to which the man turns around with a heavy scowl.

Seeing her, his scowl is replaced by a look of horror.

"What are _you _doing here?" he says, aghast.

Hermione blinks. Her cheeks tinge red with embarrassment. _There goes the 'assertive' plan,_ she thinks glumly."What do you mean what am I doing here?" she asks.

Malfoy cast a paranoid look about them, then clamps a hand down on her shoulder and pulls them swiftly into a pool of shadow where they're hidden. She quickly shakes off his hand, her heart skipping a creeped beat at the unexpected touch. In the dark, Malfoy hisses, "You better get out of here before he sees you-"

"_He?" _She narrows her eyes and stabs a finger at Malfoy's chest, declaring, "You mean Voldemort, don't you?"

Malfoy's eyes widen as he realizes his mistake. He flushes, which makes his strange colorless hair seem even brighter than before, and he mutters, "Er… who's Voldemort?"

Hermione snorts. "Nice try. But that's _my _question, actually." She stares at him suspiciously. "And what did you mean by 'get out of here before he sees you'?"

"Look, it doesn't matter what I meant – and I'm not saying that you're right either. What matters is that you _scram_."

"I'm not going anywhere." Her heart is racing from all her daring. She lifts her chin, looking Malfoy directly in the eye. "Not until you tell me what's going on."

Malfoy scowls irritably. "Fine. Stay then, because I'm not telling you a thing. I'm not crazy enough to value your life over my own." And he stomps away, swearing and skulking. Hermione hurries after him.

"Wait!" she says quickly.

Malfoy shows her a choice finger.

"Look, you don't have to tell me everything," she wagers, catching up. "Just tell me a few things."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?" she demands, offended.

Malfoy sends her a quick, frigid smile. It's not becoming at all. "Because I've been told not to."

"By Voldemort?"

He pointedly ignores that.

"Ok, fine. Don't tell me." Hermione takes a deep breath. "I just- I don't understand what the big deal is. Is he anti-social or something? Is he shy? Is that why he doesn't want me to know about him?"

Malfoy barks out a harsh laugh at _shy. _"He's anything but that, Miss Granger, I assure you. He's quite adamant to meet you actually."

"Voldemort?"

Malfoy nods, then freezes midway and glares at her poisonously. She smiles back.

"So," she says innocently. "What are all the…theatrics…for?"

"Hell if I know." Malfoy sighs. "I just manage his finances."

She mulls over that.

Malfoy glances over at her and stops, as if considering something. Slowly, he says, "If you want a bit of advice, however… I'd suggest that you pack your bags as soon as you get back to that big house you're staying in. And leave. Immediately."

She laughs, but instead of coming off as nonchalant and unconcerned, she sounds nervous. Because how can she leave when there's nowhere to go? "You think I should run away?"

"I don't think you should, _I know _you should." Malfoy receives his jacket and hat from the coat check. Donning both, he sends one last unfriendly eye-muster at her. "If I see you again, you'll be a stupid fool, Miss Granger," he says matter-of-factly. "If I don't, you're one of the few smart ones."

And he leaves.

_Great, _Hermione thinks, frowning as she watches the blonde go. _Now I know even less about this Voldemort than I did before._

She makes to leave, but before she can there's a voice at her ear, a man extending a hand to her with a secret smile. She regards that hand warily.

"Cygnus Black," the man introduces. He drops his hand when she doesn't shake it. He doesn't look insulted though. Just smooth. "I assume you are Miss Granger?"

"Yes." Hermione eyes him untrustingly. "How do you know that?"

"Everyone here knows who you are." Cygnus leans closer, smile gone fox-like, and whispers, "They just don't know it yet."

She raises a brow.

"Anyway." Cygnus leans back, cracking his knuckles in a way that makes her cringe. He has brown curly hair. "I was eavesdropping on your conversation with Mr. Malfoy there and I couldn't help but notice you've a little dilemma."

"Oh?" she says. "And what is that?"

"Voldemort." Cygnus evaluates her, with dark brown eyes that could have seen guns fired at innocents as easily as they could have seen the moment in which they could have stopped the trigger from being pulled. He has the gaze of a bluffer, Hermione thinks. "Do you want to meet him?"

"Yes." She's surprised, but her answer has no doubts. She tilts her head. "You know where he is?"

"Of course." Cygnus rubs his jaw, slightly scruffy with a five o' clock shadow. It gives his attractive looks a rough edge. "I run the shows here all the time, Miss Granger – and besides, everyone knows. Most of them just don't know it yet."

Hermione frowns. Before she can ask what the devil he means by that, however, Cygnus is already walking away, gesturing for her to follow and disappearing through the revolving brass-gold doors in a flash. Reluctantly, she goes after him.

_Art people_. Why do they always have to be so god-damn dramatic?

"So how do you know Voldemort?" she asks, while they sit on the subway chugging them through the tunnels webbing the city underground. The train is cramped and sweaty. Cygnus impatiently drums his fingers on the steel safety pole he's gripping. Hermione wishes that she'd put on one of the dresses in her closet when a bead of sweat dribbles from her damp hairline and onto her lip.

_The dresses that fit me like a glove and are all varying shades of purple_. The dresses that give her unexplainable goosebumps every time she looks at them.

"I'm a friend from his school days," Cygnus answers briefly, pulling her out of her thoughts. She looks up.

"What school did you go to?"

He grins slowly. "You know already...you just don't know it yet."

Hermione purses her lips at this living paradox. "You know, you're quite annoying, Mr. Black."

"Call me Cyg."

The subway suddenly squeals to the eighth stop and when the doors slide open this time, Cygnus stands. She stands, too, listening to the intercom to see where they are and congregating with the crowd onto the platform outside. Cygnus finds her amidst the faces and waves, indicating for her to come over. She struggles through the hot mass to him.

"What are we– or what is _Voldemort_, I mean – doing in Queens?" she queries.

"Waiting."

"For?" she prompts impatiently.

"Meh, one second." Cygnus fumbles to light a cigarette as they ascend the metal stairs leading to higher ground and he offers one to her, wriggling the box. She shakes her head.

"I don't like the smell of nicotine," she finds herself explaining.

"Oh, ok." Cygnus takes one quick drag of his cig and drops the rest, kicking it into a grate that rumbles from the subway roaring on rusty tracks beneath them. He coughs. "So what did you say?"

"I asked what Voldemort is waiting for."

"Ah, that's an easy one." He shoots her a teasing smile. "You sure you can't figure it out on your own, honey bunch?"

She grits her teeth, growing irritated at the nickname. "Would you just tell me already-?"

"Ok, ok, relax." Cygnus ignores her witch glare and walks on obliviously, guiding them through a shabby neighborhood with broken streetlights and shifty eyes lurking in the alleyways – or maybe that last part is just her imagination. Either way, Hermione steps closer to her newfound companion on instinct. "He's waiting for you, actually. And so are the others."

"_What_?" And what of others? What is he talking about?

Patiently, Cygnus repeats, "Voldemort is waiting for you-"

"No, I heard that part." She stares ahead of them, trying to figure out where they're going. What are they doing in a neighborhood? she wonders. "But why? What's going on?"

"Beats me." Cygnus, it seems, is just as unhelpfully unknowing as Malfoy. It is this fact that makes her all the more determined to find out what is going on.

He stops them at an herbal shop called _Snape's Specialities _and sweeps his arm out in an ironically gentlemanly fashion, holding open the door. "Ladies first, ma'am," he says in a Southern drawl.

_If I see you again, you'll be a stupid fool, Miss Granger. If I don't, you're one of the few smart ones._

Hermione is many things, but 'a stupid fool' is not one of them. Curious, sometimes rash and quite stubborn might fit the bill, but stupid and fool most certainly do not. She is only tired of running away from her problems. She is only determined to be the first to confront the bully for once in her life.

_New York must be getting to me, _she thinks drily, going into the shop.

The herbal shop is a nasal assault of tea leaves, incense, what may or may not be pot and a number of other strange stinky objects that sting her eyeballs. A bell overhead rings at their entrance. She discreetly fans the air in front of her nose, coughing.

"Don't worry, it gets better," Cygnus assures. But his eyes water.

"Voldemort is in here?" she sneezes incredulously.

He scoffs. "Don't be silly! He's under here, at the Fat Lady's."

_Under? _Hermione frowns and begins to say, "What's the Fat Lady?" But she's cut short by the arrival of a tall bat.

Except it's not really a bat. It's a man, dressed like a bat in black ensemble, with greasy hair and oily-black eyes. He steps out of an _employees only _door and regards them with the expression someone wears when they find a half-dead, twitching cockroach in their French fries.

All in all, he doesn't look pleased to see them.

"Mr. Black, what are you doing here?" The man, who Hermione assumes is the owner of the shop, looks right over her at Cygnus. His lip curls. "And why, pray tell, did you bring that...unsavory thing into my store?"

She bristles.

"We're here for the Fat Lady, Snape." Cygnus nods at Hermione casually, seemingly unruffled by Snape's pessimistic mood. "She wants to come along."

Severus Snape's eyes shrink into suspicious slits. However, all he does is hold out a hand and wait until Cygnus drops a rather thick wad of cash into his palm. Hermione blinks and squints at it. Are those _twenties? _Before she can figure it out, Snape has whirled around and is striding away to his cash register, carelessly saying, "You know where to go, I presume."

Cygnus nods.

Hermione, feeling much like Alice going down the rabbit hole, goes after Cygnus Black into the _employees only _backroom. The interior isn't very impressive. It's dark, organized but terribly cluttered, and filled with filing cabinets galore. Cygnus goes to the very back and pulls aside a curtain, which reveals a portrait of a rather pudgy woman dressed in Renaissance garb. _The Fat Lady._ With what little art knowledge she has, Hermione gathers that the painting is a Rubens copy.

Cygnus knocks on the door, thrice.

The eyes of the Fat Lady slide aside – it's a slat – to be replaced by two very small, watery blue ones. "Who's there?" a nasally voice says.

"Use your eyes, idiot." Cygnus stares back into the ugly eyes impatiently. "Who does it look like? I'm here every week."

"What is the password?"

"Open the damn door, Wormtail, you little rat crap."

Wormtail's ugly eyes flash with annoyance but he concedes, climbing off of what sounds like a stepstool from the other side. Then the Fat Lady, which turns out to be a secret entrance, swings open backward and reveals a stairway lit by torches... going down into the unknown. Hermione can hear music from below and realizes this must be what Cygnus meant before by _under_.

"What is this, some sort of a club?" she stammers. Cygnus looks amused by her nerves.

"Actually, Voldemort's throwing a party." He steps back. "Go on. I'll be right behind you."

She can only hope he'll keep that promise.

Carefully, cautiously, Hermione steps onto the first stone step. Wormtail, who turns out to be three inches shorter than her and quite rat-like, scowls at her with yellowed buck teeth. She looks away quickly and goes down the stairs faster after that, until she reaches the entrance of a - well - _a party._

She stops on the bottom step, looking around wonderingly. The lights have a strange tint and simmer so low it's hard to see more than one thing at a time. Everyone wears white here, their stylish dresses and suits glowing as they pass under a gleaming bulb, and silver confetti seems to have passed in a rain, because it dresses the floor like a shiny coat and clusters in girls' hair. Hermione's white shoe laces are the only things that glow on her.

Cygnus bumps into her back suddenly, having run right into her. She stumbles. "Keep going," Cygnus tells her, and he has to shout into her ear for her to hear him. "Unless you'd like to stand here and gape at everybody like a stunned fish all day?"

She looks over her shoulder, sends Cygnus a withering glare he sticks his tongue out at, and steps inside. To her right, a crowded bar made of sleek steel offers cyber-green cocktails and petit fours on metallic platters. Cygnus snatches one glass up as they pass, downing it in one fluid movement. Hermione doesn't touch the liquor. She doesn't want to end up like the girl doing a strip-tease on the ninety-something-year old's lap while a group of half-naked guys – or girls maybe? – have a tap dancing contest around them.

"I'll catch up with you later, Hermione," Cygnus shouts over the _swing_, which is smashing out of the orchestra pit. His sly eyes catch on a leggy Indian girl sauntering into a gyrating mass of white wearers and slant. He has the look of a hungry lion prowling in the savannah.

Hermione is worried. "But how am I supposed to find Voldemort? I don't even know what he looks like-"

"Don't worry." He's already walking away. "He arranged all of this just for you. If you don't find him, he'll find..." The remainder of his words are swallowed in the music, in the sensational party. Hermione's eyes widen. Feeling the air beside her go colder, she looks up to see Cygnus stalking after his possible hook-up.

_Fantastic. Now I'm alone (yet again) and hardly any closer to finding Voldemort than I was an hour ago. _Why did she bother with Cygnus? Sure, she doesn't have many leads, but obviously this is a mistake.

Examining her rather frightening surroundings, Hermione smooths her best pants and tip-toes past the dance floor to a hangout in the back, where a small group inhabit a format of sleek ivory furniture and various glass sculptures drip from multiple surfaces like frozen tears. Two obese men who look like bouncers take up one icicle-ish couch and a woman with vivid, bright orange eyeshadow that strangely suits her sits in a see-through chair that looks like a carved out block. Hermione hides out on the empty loveseat.

And although she's the one who set out to find Voldemort, she can't help but feel _he's _the one who has found _her _now_. _Not that he's anywhere in sight.

The woman across from her in the block chair pops neon-colored gum and looks at her over an upside-down magazine called _the Quibbler. _She catches her eye and smiles, alerting Hermione to the white lipstick spread across her pouty lips in generous layers. Apparently, this strange little party has a color code.

"I'm Pansy," the woman says, fluttering her long fingernails in hello. She points at the two bouncer-like men. "That's Crabbe and Goyle. They're my bitches."

Hermione blinks.

"Just kidding." Casting aside the magazine, which hits the wall with a soft slap and ends up in a punchbowl that glows pink-purple, Pansy reaches up and drags a hand of French-tipped nails up her leg provoactively. "You're cute," she continues without an ounce of self-consciousness or the usual engrained social barrier. "I can see why he's so interested in you."

_She means Voldemort. _Somehow, everyone she's met today seems to know about him. Everyone except her that is. But how does Pansy know who she is? Hermione shifts uncomfortably in her seat. "He's… he's spoken of me?"

Pansy nods.

"And he's...interested?"

"_Extremely_."

"But what does that mean?" she says, frustrated. "What is it that exactly-?"

Pansy interrupts her interrogation with a sharp laugh – short and sounding of embedded glass. Slyly, she looks at her through false eyelashes. They're white, too, and frizzy-soft like the plucked feathers of a goose. This woman has most certainly taken the dress code to the extreme. "Why don't you just ask him, Hermione?"

_Because I don't know him. Because I've never met him, although it seems everyone in New York already has. Because I'm not sure I want to know the answer._

"Do you read _the Quibbler?" _Pansy says, cutting Hermione's mental tirade short.

"No."

"Well, I know the editor's daughter Luna Lovegood." She laughs wonderfully. "If you think I'm a sight, you should meet her! I'll introduce you two sometime."

"Um…" Hermione isn't sure what to say. Luckily, she's saved from having to respond when Pansy's eyes catch on something behind her and the woman blinks, getting to her feet at a moment's notice. "Come on, Crabbe, Goyle," she says coolly, but pointedly. "It's time to go."

Crabbe and Goyle immediately climb off the couch – which sighs in relief once released from the burden of them – and they trudge after Pansy as she disappears into the crowd. Just before the white-wearing trenches enclose them, however, Pansy looks back over her shoulder and flutters her fingers at Hermione in goodbye. "_Ciao, _cutie!" she calls.

Hermione waves back.

As she is contemplating the weirdness of this recent experience (and of today's experience as a whole), however, she suddenly becomes aware of the person standing behind her, of the shadow he casts on the bleached granite floor. Of the wide girth of space between this section of the club and…everyone else.

It's Voldemort. It has to be.

But it's not.

Because as she concentrates, she realizes that she _recognizes _this person. There's something about them, about their air, about their silence, that strikes a chord inside her. It strikes fear. It strikes something else too. Something she cannot identify. It's the same supernaturally familiar feeling she felt when she broke into Voldemort's studio.

_The unlocked door. _Did Voldemort plan that, too? Plan leaving the envelope in the hope that she'd find it, that she would come to his art show looking for him? Did he send Cygnus to find her there and bring her to the Fat Lady? What for though? Why didn't he just introduce himself when she first got here? _Why?_

Who would go through such pains to get to her? To get inside her mind and to stick there so fast? To make such a maddeningly intricate plan?

Why get to her at all?

The answer comes suddenly, and it's painfully clear. It's _him. _It's impossible, but it cannot be anyone else. It doesn't make sense, yet it makes perfect sense. Hermione's fingers go rigid where they grip the loveseat, scratching gouges into the baby-soft suede. Tension makes her tongue twist and heart pound.

_He left me. He's found me._

She doesn't understand.

She doesn't want to.

"Hermione," Tom greets in a low murmur, touching the side of her neck with one long cold finger. His touch is cautious, but she can feel the urge he has – the urge he's always had – to touch her just the same. She shivers.

_This can't be real, _she thinks frantically.

But it is.


	9. Chapter 9

Tom Riddle hasn't changed much.

He has the same strong dark brows, confidently posed over full-lashed eyes pretty enough to be a woman's, a heart-like jawline, high rise cheekbones and lips that invite you to listen for days on end. He's made up like a present in a white velvet suit, the pants an inch or two longer than they would've been when he was seventeen. A green silk handkerchief peeks out of the breast pocket. Hermione breathes in and the dizzyingly familiar scent of mint and acrylic paints slams into her chest like a punch.

When she reaches his eyes, she wants to die.

The eyes induce a flash flood of memories. Memories she's tried to suppress, memories that torture her subconscious mind when she sleeps, memories that threaten to consume and drink dry: the good and the bad, they all swirl together until they're homogeneous, racing, flashing, taunting things. What she's tried so hard to block out is rushing back, taking her by storm, shoving ahead, demanding confrontation. It's like being hit by a freight train, slammed into the shoulder by a ton of metalwork and steel beams and steaming hot iron. It knocks the breath out of you, tries to mow you down so you won't get back up, to _take over_-

"Hermione... you look very pale."

Does she? Well then, she must have been gone for some time, because when Hermione looks up it's to find Tom on the sofa and one of his hands deftly brushing some flyaways behind her ear. She abruptly remembers that this is what he does - no, what he _used _to do when he was worried about her. But he was never worried, not really. That would imply he had cared.

"Hermione? What is it? Tell me, please. I'd like to fix it." Tom is murmuring into her forehead where he's tucked his mouth, holding her against him, stroking her hair reassuringly. It's a seductive mantra, but backwards - a lion tamer petting his trained beast on the tawny mane instead of striking it - and it makes her head snap back. Tom's hand hovers in the air and he stares at her, hurt - no that's not right - _surprised_. He repeats, "What's wrong?"

_Of course he knows something is wrong, _Hermione thinks, still rattled that the monster put his hands on her. Nothing ever gets by people like him. _People like him. _But that is incorrect, too. There is no one in this world or any other like Tom Riddle. Except, perhaps, the atom bomb.

God, she hates him.

But what she hates the most is how much she _missed _him without even realizing it.

When it's clear her silence isn't going to end, Tom speaks again. "I missed you." He pauses, gaging her blank stare before making an additional statement. "And I heard you were having trouble."

_I've only ever had trouble because of you. _The thought is instant, but Hermione only feels...detached. As if she's watching herself from a distance, breathing and talking with the phenomenon of every childhood horror, of every loaded insult and malignant threat, of the first and last kiss, like it's all a dream. It feels like a dream.

_This must be a dream._ There's no other way.

Tom holds out a hand. It's pale and has too long, tapered fingers that are elegant and slightly alienish. They're too delicate to be on a man, but there they are. His hand asks a question, and there's an endearing wariness in his eyes. _Is he afraid? Of me? _No, that can't be possible. Her brain can't even juggle such a preposterous concept for more than a moment. Tom Riddle simply does not _do_ fear.

He inspires it.

Suddenly, Hermione feels something shrivel up inside her. Numbness disappears and in its place surges something quite toxic. It feels like bees trapped under her tongue, buzzing and swarming furiously, a heat in her veins that won't stop, rushing into her face and turning it an unbecoming shade of tomato. Her teeth clench and her hands roll into fists and she blinks rapidly to try to get rid of the burning behind her eyes. A clarity bursts through the fog that had previously made her passive, like a break in the clouds, and she thinks _how _hasn't this happened before? Why didn't she realizeit?

How did she never figure out that past all the fear and the longing she was positively _furious_?

There's a pause in the swing as the musicians tune their instruments and Hermione glances at the sweating crowd, noticing they're being observed by a small party made up of Cygnus, Pansy, and Crabbe and Goyle. When the onlookers see they've been caught in the act, they hurry to dissipate. She doesn't care. She has been played so many times she hardly feels affected by their intrusion.

"Why am I really here, Tom?"

Tom mulls over his response, but only for show. It's apparent that he's been planning for this for a long time. "To keep a promise, I suppose."

"You suppose?" She sounds condescending, but she doesn't give a damn. _Six years _werespent without a letter, without a word or sliver of knowledge that he was even alive, and he sent her on this wild goose chase to keep a...a silly _promise_? She should feel surprised, shocked even, angrier. She only feels a vague resignation however.

Tom smiles faintly. "Yes, you see, I promised to come back for you. I let you try to lead a life on your own, to have the space away from me that you wanted so badly, for as long as you could stand on your own two feet." He spreads his hands. "When you failed, I sent for you."

"'Failed'?" Hermione repeats indignantly. As the pieces she'd already suspected of connection begin to come together, horror and disgust replace the emotion. She shakes her head. "No. That's not possible... Madame Pomfrey... she thought you were someone else, Mr. Malfoy or whomever. She did not _deliberately _send me to you-"

"She did," interrupts Tom. "Because I told her to. She works for me, Hermione. She has since 1943." At her look of pure bewilderment, he adds, "Someone had to keep an eye on you. How do you wager your paycheck justmanaged to pay the obscene rent for that rotten Dursley family you stayed with, and your living expenses at that? If you'd talked to any of your co-workers, I'm sure you would've found their wage very different from yours, Hermione." He pauses. "But you didn't. You were never very good at making friends, were you?"

It's a low blow and he knows it.

"Now that you're here," Tom goes on, "I need you to make good on your promise to me."

It takes Hermione a minute to respond. She closes her eyes briefly, opens them. "Do you now?" she finally says. "And what promise is that?"

"Yourself."

Well. You'd have to be blind, deaf, dumb _and_ damned to believe Tom Riddle doesn't have nerve. That was for sure. Hermione rubs a hand down one side of her face, choking back a sudden, bizarre spurt of incredulous laughter - or vomit. "Pardon… _me_?"

"Yes."

"Ah." She nods, like a morsel of this conversation is reasonable. "And you expect I'm going to keep a promise I made when I was sixteen as well. Is that right?_"_

"No, I don't." He looks thoughtful. "At least not right away."

Hermione struggles for an adequate response that doesn't involve screaming. Meanwhile, Tom examines the open hostility in her expression like it's a half-interesting specimen, his gaze skimming back and forth over her face. The angel eyes are copious, but strangely enough, they have no effect on this burning rage lurching through her veins. After a moment he leans forward, gently touching the inside of her wrist - experimentally. She freezes.

_He's a lunatic. Don't let him get to you. _Hermione breathes in deeply, trying to recover some sort of composure - but the air hisses on the way out. "You are..." She struggles for a politer adjective. "Inconceivable."

"I disagree." He inches closer, as if attracted to that strange furious specimen dying to escape her, to mutilate and take hold of its generator. His fingers play on the back of her hand, a tender caress, and Hermione automatically snatches it away. But his touch incites an inevitable shudder - of revulsion? of want? - and she tries to hide it, but he sees. His eyes narrow a touch.

"Why so cold, Hermione?" he inquires rather frigidly himself. A bleak smile appears at the answering silence. "Oh, I see - I took all the warmth out of you when I left, did I? You rotted away without me."

Hermione's lip curls against her will. _Don't let him provoke you, _she thinks, but the verbal whips snarl out anyway. "Not at all, Tom. In fact, I think you have the opposite effect on my person: when you come near, the worst parts of me creep out." She smiles menacingly.

Tom laughs - astonishingly loud - and then he's abruptly close, so close Hermione can count his harsh breaths and has to hold still - just as one must when faced by a territorial, rabid dog - to keep from running away. She shuts her eyes, trying to envision herself some place far from here, but it only makes things worse.

"You cruel thing!" A finger carefully touches Hermione's hair, followed by Tom's sigh. "I forgot how charmed you were by verse... I'll make my words pretty for you then." No heat comes off his cheek, hovering an inch over her own. He is cold to the touch, as if he has walked inside from a blizzard, but it is summer and Hermione feels the sweat pooling on the small of her back when he whispers to her.

"your broken heart  
on my canvas  
sets a price  
that only I can pay."

He pauses. "If you'll let me."

"Never," Hermione says, spinning away from him. She doesn't want him close enough to hear the way she pants, like a dog out in the heat. "You're an artist, not a poet, Tom."

A quiet descends, or at least _they're _quiet. The party is still in full swing. Tom has gotten handsomer somehow and she hates that, she hates how she notices it. He's studying her expression. Those dark eyes are softening behind the mean front, and it's abominable, because they're softening at _her_.

When Tom speaks next, his voice is painfully soft. "Baby..."

_Baby. _That name is tied with too many evils. It's heaven and hell all wrapped into one. It's an addict mother, beckoning with a pair of pliers and saying "_baby, please don't give me that look," _and it's Hermione's pathetic childhood love story whispering_"kiss me like you miss me, baby."_

"This is all a game to you, isn't it?" Hermione says quietly.

The smile doesn't leave Tom's face, but his eyes lose some of their artificial warmth. He stares at her and for once, she sees what he is really feeling - not the cool, collected Tom Riddle presented to the elite class around them in their white tie and pearl-embroidered dresses - but the Tom she knows from years ago. The same boy who has suddenly realized this is no longer a child's game. A furious Tom, at the moment. "You were never a _game_ to me," he sneers. "You know that."

"If I were daft enough to believe you for a minute..." She stops and sighs. "I'm disposable to you, aren't I? A trinket you grew tired of and only just remembered. Maybe you'll use me up and throw me out again, then come along a few years later claiming that all this time 'you've cared.' Lucky me, I'm you're back-up plan!" The bitterness in her voice is palpable, if not utterly mortifying. She finds that she's too angry to give a damn.

Tom considers her. "Is that what you think?"

"It's what I know," she says.

"I suppose I'll just have to prove you wrong then."

"Good luck with that," Hermione snorts, tossing her hair. She doesn't know where all this righteous behavior is coming from - it must be the anger, or adrenaline, or maybe someone put something questionable in the sip of ginger ale she had earlier. Still, she feels triumphant.

Until she sees the smirk on Tom's face.

Before Hermione can question it, he suddenly says, "It's just that you're so... different."

Her eyes narrow at the stench of a trick. "Different?" she repeats.

"Yes, you are." Tom moves forward before she can move back and tugs a lock of hair playfully. Twists the curl around his finger so tight it ends up locked against her scalp. "It isn't only your hair, which is hardly so fluffy now." Hermione yanks her head away from him. She can't tell whether it's a complaint or an approval, but it doesn't matter. She can't tell where is up or down. Tom's eyes drip down her body like too much paint. "But that shade of lavender makes your skin this wonderful hue of brown - it's sort of olive-toned. You know, I've always liked purple on you, it does wonders for your color." He lowers his voice. "Of course, I would prefer you out of the dress."

Hermione's hand jerks across his face. But Tom only laughs at her. He shakes off her slap and traces a chart of her skin idly, right above her elbow and right below the shirt sleeve. She doesn't move as he circles the tip of his finger there. She is not sure why. Perhaps it is because a secret, malicious part of her enjoys how his skin longs for hers so hungrily, and that she is able to deny him this pleasure if she wishes to. Like she's the medicine to some terminal disease he's cursed with, or the evil dose of morphine that keeps him crawling back. And then another part hates how he touches her without any hesitation at all, as if it is his own skin he is caressing, as if she is a mere extension of himself.

Or maybe she only sits still because he _has _come back for her - and done so to such extremes - just as he promised he would six years ago. He never truly left, in fact. It can only mean he could not get her out of his mind, just as she couldn't get him out of hers. Did she haunt his nightmares, too? she wonders.

She prays to God she did.

"Your eyes are just the same though," Tom says, whispering in her ear just as he did when they were children. Hermione realizes he's not kidding around anymore. _When did he get so close? _She hasn't the faintest idea. His head turns and - before she realizes what he intends to do - their mouths quietly brush.

Hermione's eyes close for a split-second before she remembers herself. She twists away. "Stop that."

Tom smirks. "Make me."

She slaps him across the face a second time - with real force behind it. He mutters a surprised curse and she jumps to her feet, but he grabs her before she can make a run for it. She kicks his shin and he trips her around the ankle. Hermione falls on the floor, where forgotten wine and champagne glasses punch her stomach and legs like a dozen unrelenting, pointy fists. She grunts at the bruises that are sure to form while Tom's right cheek flares angry red-violet at the second- at the third slap. Then they're kissing.

They're kissing hard and fast, and it's not sweet at all - lord, it's not even natural. Tom's lips shape around hers and inhale the air coming out of her lungs in sharp _g-g-gasps_ like he's trying to suck it out, a CPR in reverse that forces her tongue into a wild tango. They roll off the pool of spilled cocktails and smack into the leg of the coffee table. Trumpets blare and bass chords are plucked and drunken laughter dances around them. Tom pulls Hermione tight to his chest. A sticky trail of alcohol - or is it blood? - snakes down her leg, somehow having found itself hitched around Tom's hip. She hisses expletives between the rough, frantic kisses Tom bestows on her and smacks the side of her head into his face.

"God!" Tom pulls back, touching his bloody nose delicately. He gives Hermione a disgusted look. "You _head butted _me."

"And?" she says (though she has to admit, she could stand to be a little more mature), but the bright red on his usually pristine teeth makes her smug. She was aiming to knock one out, but blood will do, she supposes- Tom's dark eyes narrow and a thrill of terror shocks through her-

Hands grab hair, mouths meet and she tastes rust - there are fingers rubbing up her back, curling around and shoving her closer - Tom's body is narrow and hard, all traces of soft teenage flesh scraped clean off - she kisses wildly and harshly, not for affection, but out of a child's spite. His tongue takes what it wants, persistently driving through her mouth, stroking suggestively, mocking. She's going to scream.

It's only when Tom's kiss gentles a tad and his fingers twist with hers that Hermione finally pulls back. Her hair is sky high where he's yanked at it. His face is bruised yellow-blue where she slapped him various times. Seeing her hand trapped inside his hurls her back a decade and bile surges up her throat.

"You still have it," Tom says softly. His eyes are on _it. _On the ring she never had the heart to throw away, on the proof that some measly part of her has always hoped for his return, that some sliver never wanted to let go really. She feels his heart miss a beat, and then pick up speed under her palm. When did she grab his shirt? "I thought you might've…" he murmurs.

"Let go of me."

He looks up, taken off guard. "What?"

"Let go of me," she repeats, and the words are dull knives. Tom blinks.

"But I-"

"I said, let _go!" _Hermione rips herself out of Tom's grip, wrenching to a stand. She cannot believe this happened. She can't believe she just let him…that she… and he...

Oh bloody hell, she's going to cry.

Tom watches the back of Hermione's hand saw its way back and forth across her mouth expressionlessly. Once Hermione is satisfied the contaminating taste of him is gone, she fixes her arms over her chest and glares at a point on the ceiling like the glimmery golden shade of paint had mortally offended her. Or maybe she's keeping down equally offensive tears.

She states, "I need to leave."

Tom nods, but his jaw juts and twitches. "I'll call a taxi-"

"Not with _you-"_

"Black will escort you."

"Black?" Hermione starts to ask, but then remembers - Cyg. Right. She thinks of the entire day that has transpired and wants nothing more than to go back in time, before Mr. Malfoy was just a front for Voldemort, before Madame Pomfrey wasn't an exceptionally kind French woman, before Tom Riddle was anything more than a common name. She visibly sags. "Fine."

Belatedly, as Hermione is maneuvering through the tipsy frenzy, she realizes that Tom Riddle probably thinks she is going to stay with him in his swaggering mansion until he dismisses her - or until the end of time. She comprehends fully that it is foolish to go back to that beautiful, sprawling estate on Long Island even when she has nowhere else to go. She has nothing in the world beside it. Yet, she promises herself she'll set Tom straight tomorrow. She has no plans of sticking around. She just needs one more night, to plan, to think, to prepare, to verify that this is all hasn't been a very vivid nightmare.

Hermione passes the bar and pretends not to notice the chain reaction of Tom casually waving a hand and Cygnus instantaneously gliding out of the shimmying masses to her side. Cyg says nothing as they move toward the exit. Hermione is surrounded by enemies and strangers.

Around them, the dance floor pitches under thrilling moves and daring lunges, the raining silver confetti swarming like shiny bees at each step. All the white is at odds with the Fat Lady's neutral color scheme interior, but it somehow still manages to look good. Hermione stumbles and Cygnus steadies her, but she shoulders his hands off with a few choice words Mrs. Cole would have stuck soap in her mouth for.

Cygnus looks sorry. His mouth moves, but she doesn't hear him over the whining violin. She glances behind them to see Tom on his feet and watching them with his hands in the pockets of those creamy slacks. The combed-back thick, dark hair on his head is another one of many sharp odds against all the white.

The crowd shuts up like a hungry beak and swallows him.

"Come on! Move it, move it!" Cygnus shouts, impatiently thrusting people aside. A cup of that weird green drink is dumped on Hermione's blouse and a body throws itself at her, jostling them both. They topple up the stairs and only breathe a sigh of relief when the portrait of the Fat Lady closes behind them.

Hermione surveys her stained blouse with aggravation. But then she's ridiculously pleased, because Tom liked it and he bought it and now it's good for nothing. _Ha! _her brain shouts toward the Fat Lady, cocky as a rooster. She's officially lost her wits.

Snape's herbal shop that smells of pot and too many lavender candles is strangely peaceful after so much chaos in the Fat Lady. Hermione and Cygnus exit onto a pitch-black street and head somewhere more active, each lost in their own thoughts. Hermione sighs heavily. She's trembling, but the brisk evening air has nothing to do with it.

"What time is it?" she finally asks, in an exhausted scratchy voice that sounds nothing like her own. She decides it's no use to be mad at Cygnus, not when Tom - or Voldemort or whoever he is - is the actual instigator. _Hate the cheater, not the mistress._ Cyg wrestles his arms into the sleeves of someone's leather jacket he mysteriously ended up with before answering.

"Three AM." He sounds as tired as she feels. "So, uh, what happened between you and…?"

Hermione feels herself go red. She stares at the cement sidewalk they walk over, dotted with wads of dried-up gum and lost pennies here and there. "You, er, saw us?"

"Sorry to break it to you, but I'm not the only one."

_Excellent. _She rubs her temples. "I'm not a call girl, if you're wondering," she says defensively.

"I wasn't wondering." Cygnus smiles lopsidedly at her pleasant surprise. "I was sort of assuming, up until now."

"Drat."

They laugh warily. Hermione thinks it feels strange to laugh with a stranger.

After a thoughtful moment, Cygnus asks, "So what's going on with you two anyway? I've never seen Voldemort like that before."

"Like what?" she says, perplexed.

"For one, I didn't know he could smile." He waits for a beat and Hermione realizes she was supposed to laugh a minute too late. They endure another awkward silence before Cyg clears his throat and asks, "Do you know him from before or something?"

"I have the feeling you already know," she replies. Cygnus blushes. Obviously, he's been doing some of his own digging. She sighs, kicking at a glass Coca Cola bottle. "I didn't mean to." Unnecessarily, she adds, "To kiss."

"Um…"

"Never mind." Now she's blushing too. "I didn't mean to unload all my girly problems on you either-"

"No, no, it's alright." Cygnus smiles hastily. The awkward bubble swelling between them suddenly doubles in size. "I don't mind. I'm kind of used to it anyway. I grew up with two brothers and a crazy niece who liked to take out all her female drama on my unfortunate person," he babbles.

She nods. "Thanks."

The rest of the night – or very early in the morning, she supposes – passes very quickly after that. Before Hermione knows it, she's back at the mansion and all alone with her guilty thoughts. She gets ready for bed and lies down, but sleep evades her. And how can she sleep? Her pulse is flying, the blush stubbornly refuses to fade from her cheek, and she can still feel _his _lips on hers, the sting of her palm hitting his cheek and the satisfaction she feels at that sharp pain…

She never realized that she missed him, that she was angry at him. She's missed him just as much as she's hated him, in fact. But how can you love and hate one person? That doesn't work. _They _don't work. It was proven six years ago.

No one in their right mind would be with someone like Tom. With someone so controlling, so possessive, so seductive they could make murder look right. Hermione stares at the shiny brand-new typewriter on her desk, gleaming threateningly in the dark. It calls to her, a gift with many, many strings attached from Tom Riddle. Tomorrow, she could write. Tomorrow, she could talk to Cyg again. Tomorrow, she could… leave. She could leave just as she should. That's the smart thing.

Before Hermione can decide which she should do first, she's fast asleep.

* * *

Hermione's trunk is packed. She grasps it and moves into the hall, walking briskly through Tom Riddle's mansion with the full intent of leaving it forever. Her heart bleats painfully, but she ignores that. The pain will fade. It has before.

She strides into the foyer and Kreacher sees. His yellowish eyes widen to see her suitcase and he scrambles up, breaking away from a group of servants he'd been issuing orders to and hastening toward her. She picks up pace.

"M-Miss Wilkins!" he ribbits, getting her name wrong again. "Where are you going?"

"Away." Her reply has no wriggle room.

Kreacher blots his suddenly perspiring forehead with a handkerchief, attempting to keep pace. "P-perhaps you should wait another hour. I believe it is going to rain and I know you wouldn't like to ruin such a fine dress in the storm-"

"I like the rain. In fact, I love it." Hermione drags open one of the towering front doors before a maid can beat her to it. Kreacher looks on agitatedly. "Good day, Mr. Kreacher." _For always_.

Hermione goes outside into a full-blown sunny day with blue skies that begin to clot with thunderheads bruised violet in the distance. Another summer lightning storm is coming. She feels so sick she knows she'll throw up if she stays another minute, that she'll lose it and burst into tears, beg to stay, beg to leave, or worse.

She goes to the private car waiting on the sleek driveway for her and throws open the door, jamming herself inside. "Where to?" the driver asks from the front seat.

She's sobbing. "Anywhere."

The driver turns around, leaning over the console and toward her with an amused glint in his handsome eyes. She fixes the lock of black hair that's fallen over his temple automatically. He kisses her wrist as she pulls away. "Anywhere, baby?" Tom repeats softly.

"No, I changed my mind." Hermione's tears are dry. She kisses Tom's nose, then his chin and Adam's apple, and he smiles. She smiles too. "I want to go with you. Let's go to the pool at the cove. We can kiss all day under the water."

"We can live underwater, baby." Tom lets go of the steering wheel and climbs over the partition, tugging off his shirt...

Hermione's eyes pop open. She stares at the gauzy top of the canopy above her, blinking. She's still here in Voldemort's mansion. She kissed him in her dream.

What is she doing?

Something scratches against the door from the other side and she sits up, heart picking up speed because it sounds like questions – no, like _hope. _She doesn't say anything. The knocking eventually stops. But a minute later it picks up again, in the wind that rattles against the French doors leading to the balcony, _scratch-scratch_ing the underside of her mattress as she tosses and turns, scuttling over the floorboards and catching in the canopy netting when it tries to rip through.

Hermione closes her eyes in the darkness, petrified and too drowsy to stay awake any longer. She thinks she feels an animal's claw wrap around her hand and draw its wicked-sharp talons down her cheek, breathe wet-warm huffs against her throat and ask for a taste of blood... but it's too dark to tell. To tell if it was Tom at the door or some monster, if the banging of doors down the hall is him roaring out his rage or the rain.

It's too dark to tell anything, and yet against all odds, Hermione suddenly knows that getting away from here won't be as easy as walking out the front door.


	10. Chapter 10

There is an outfit on the bed.

It's a precious summer dress, all purple silk polka-dot print and solid ivory base with the tags still on. It looks to be the pinnacle of envy of any woman in possession of a pulse. The neckline cuts straight across, high and modest just the way Hermione likes it, with a strict skirt hitting right at the knees. It looks respectable and sexy. By all means, it is a dress sent from heaven to perfectly suit Hermione Granger. She would fall in love with it if not for the fact Tom Marvolo Riddle's name was written all over it.

"Such a waste," Hermione says out loud, frowning.

She picks up the dress carefully, although the silk is of high caliber, the resistant kind that can weather storms and a hundred washes without fading. Madame Pomfrey would have died and come back again if only to touch such a gorgeous work of fabric. Unlocking the French doors to the balcony, Hermione steps outside, lightly pitching the dress over the railing. It catches in a wind belt and flies away, heading for the Hudson River. Perhaps it will wash ashore on Coney Island and make some lucky girl's day. By the time it gets to the girl, the dress might not be a dress anymore, but... Hermione sighs shakily.

She is so furious she could spit.

Hermione curls her fingers around the hot railing, glaring into the bright city skyline. Sunlight reflects off the tiny buildings and nearly blinds her – she grits her teeth and squints harder. The pain helps her focus. She grabs onto it, letting it build and fuel the fury inside her. _Son of a bitch._ No, son of no one. That was one of the perks of being an orphan, belonging to nobody except to the government who didn't want you anyway.

Tom Riddle, her childhood nightmare come back to life. There she'd been years ago in 1942, thinking her one and only friend had deserted her for good. In 1943, Hermione aged out of Wool's and found employment with Madame Pomfrey. God, how idiotically _proud _she had been to make it on her own, scraping rent and meals with pennies and sleeping in a drafty closet of a room with the miserable Dudley family. She did it all without any help, without _him. _The agony was starting to fade to a dull pang by then. Instead of seeing Tom's face in her mind at every second of everyday, it was only once an hour or two, and then, she only saw him in the morning when his voice clung to her dreams like cigarette smoke or she caught herself biting her lip and lost her breath at the memory of his lips biting hers. Then it was 1945 and she was still having dreams about Tom from time to time, wondering about him stupidly. Was he married with a wife and children? Had he forgotten about her completely yet? She cursed him over and over in her mind, in the crushing solitude of an empty room with a leaky ceiling, on the ship sailing from London to New York.

She has crossed half of the world to get away from Tom Riddle. Why the hell is he here in _New York City_?

Hermione laughs and sobs. It isn't a pitiful sound. It is ripped from her chest, clawing and snarling, cheated out of her as so much has been cheated from Hermione in her life. She has loved Tom since she was a naive little girl. How has it taken her so long to realize how thoroughly and utterly she hates that deplorable boy?

She wipes her face, but there are no tears to dry there. She feels a scary calm descend over her, a cold rationale that makes everything suddenly clear as ice. What does Tom want with her now? He'd said that he wanted her to make good on some sort of promise and while that may have been true, it certainly wasn't the whole story. She knows Tom Riddle well enough to remember that he never tells any story in full. If there's anything Tom adores, it's a secret. That's what he must have liked about her so much before...

But what secret is he keeping now?

A knock on the door interrupts her reverie. Hermione starts and has a sporadic recollection of her half-dream from last night: the rapping claws, the sounds of door slamming, and an eerie feeling her worst nightmare was stalking the halls while she slept. Is it Tom? The knock sounds again: soft, tentative. No, not him, she thinks. It's most likely one of the housekeepers.

"Yes?" she asks, opening the door to find – indeed – one of the mansion's seemingly never-ending supply of servants. She wonders why they are here at all. It's not as if anyone is making a mess of the house. The only person who lives here is Tom, and for now, her.

"Good morning, Ms. Granger," says the helper - a woman - in a heavy Brooklyn accent. "Mr. Voldemort is waiting for you downstairs in the dining room."

"Waiting for me?" Hermione frowns, like she doesn't understand. "Why would _Mr_. _Voldemort_ do a thing like that?"

"Well, for breakfast of course. Er, aren't you… hungry?" She looks terrified by the icy rage radiating off Hermione's face. "I'm sorry, Ms. Granger. Is there something wrong?"

"No, oh no, of course not." Hermione flaps her hands, waving away any worry. "What could possibly be wrong? I mean, if you don't count the fact that that bigot called your employer has the _nerve_ to expect me to go down there into that oh-so grand dining room of his and dine with him like we're good old_ pals_ and eat off his _spanking_ _new_ silverware and – what? – hold a _conversation _over flapjacks, like civilized human beings, after _six years of nothing_." She snorts _ha! _"No, nothing's wrong, because I'm not going to do that at all. You tell Mr. Voldemort-" The name is uttered carefully, like a complex set of directions. "-that I have no intention of enduring his presence today, or tomorrow, or the day after that – so no, I will not be coming to breakfast. If he wants to see me, he can come to me. And don't you worry, because NOTHING IS WRONG AT ALL."

"Good." The maid pauses, scrutinizing Hermione's feverish eyes and ragged breathing. "I'll tell him."

"Thank you."

"Should I tell Mr. Voldemort you won't be joining him for lunch either?"

"Yes, I would appreciate that." Hermione reins in some of the rage with effort, so she can say, "May I use the telephone to call a taxi?"

The maid – who had previously looked uncomfortable – now looks positively petrified. She squirms and replies, very quickly and un-elaborately, in the negative. "But why not?" Hermione begins to protest, before it hits her. _Tom_. Of course. "Mr. Voldemort would rather I didn't leave the estate, correct?" she says in a monotone.

The maid nods slightly.

Hermione purses her lips and nods with her. "Alright then."

This is utterly humiliating.

No, on second thought, it's worse than humiliating. It's laughable_._

The entire day has dragged on agonizingly, all of it spent arrested in the mansion's guest room. Hermione spent every second pacing back and forth, strategizing, turning plan after countless plan over in her head, and playing out possible scenarios in which she persuades Tom to let her leave this place unscathed. Most of her schemes end in a rather morbid manner, however, the worst of which end with Tom shackling her inside a water closet or humiliating her in some other fashion. And what does it matter anyway? Halfway through another down-the-gutter idea, Hermione stops and realizes that even if she did miraculously convince him to release her, she'd be in just as dismal a situation as she is now. Except if she isn't suffering here in the lap of luxury, she'll be suffering in the midst of New York City without a roof over her head.

_Unless I had money. _Nearly as soon as the thought dawns, it flickers out. Hermione does not steal, not even from Tom Riddle. Then again, the untouched typewriter he gave her is technically her property, therefore, she can do whatever she wants with it. How much is a typewriter of that scale worth? she wonders. It looks to be a pretty penny, but who's to say a buyer wouldn't take advantage of her and take it off her hands at a bad price? Once again, this would leave her at a disadvantage. Though there _is_ the closet of Coco Chanel at her disposal…

Her thoughts go on like this for the remainder of the day, circling and dead-ending until it is six PM and the sound of her own stomach growling finally renders her attempts useless. The conclusion that there is no possible way to escape Tom's care without killing herself in the process combined with the sensation of not having eaten in over fifteen hours is so frustrating she could scream. …Not that she couldn't eat now. After all, the maid (called Winky, as Hermione has come to know from their frequent run-ins throughout the day) extended _Mr. Voldemort's _invitation multiple times – Hermione simply refuses to accept them. Call it pride or fear or petulance, but she draws the line when her 'oh-so generous host' decides to keep her trapped like an animal. That, and Winky won't be bribed into helping her.

The sensation of helplessness is crushing.

Hermione listens to the sound of Winky's futile knocking without getting up to answer. She swallows a tasteless pool of saliva and closes her eyes. If only she could go to sleep and dream this all away, dream herself into a new world, a safe place, an abyss of nothing. Wouldn't it be lovely to live in nothing, after all? To be nothing? Nothing never cries or feels emotions, like hurt or betrayal or bitterness. Nothing is just that: nothing. Nothing is perfection.

_But I am not nothing, _Hermione thinks._ I'm not a child anymore. I am a full-grown adult. I am not irrational. I am in full-control._

She is not a child anymore.

Just like that, the solution crashes down on her, hard as a slap in the face and brilliant. _That's it. _Hermione sits up straight, remembering how she head butted Tom at the Fat Lady and feeling overtly smug. The bruise on his face probably smarts like hell at this very moment.

Mouth watering with hunger, Hermione smiles for the first time today.

The epiphany is broken by a soft – and unsurprising – rapping on the door. Hermione's hand is on the handle before the next knock can sound. "Yes, Winky," she says firmly, before the maid can get a word in edgewise. Winky's crestfallen expression gives way to befuddlement at her giddy expression, so she adds in a more subdued tone, "I'm sorry for the inconvenience earlier, but I'd be more than happy to join Mr. Voldemort for dinner now."

"You would?" Winky squeaks.

Hermione looks at her strangely_. It isn't that surprising, is it?_ "Well, yes. Unless… there's a problem with that?"

They stare at each other in tense silence for a moment.

Finally, Winky sighs loudly and says, "Look, I came up here because Mr. Voldemort is entertaining his guests, and I thought that in the time-being you could go to the dining hall and eat alone before they all leave. Since you said no all the other times-"

"Guests?" Hermione repeats, and all the giddiness swoops out of her. "What guests? Where?"

"Er…" Winky is clearly trying to judge whether or not she should impart this knowledge. After another moment (and another heavy sigh), she replies, "Yes. They're downstairs in the game room… Ms. Granger, no, please don't, Mr. Voldemort hates to be interrupted-!"

Hermione is already halfway down the hall.

She stalks through the pristine second floor, ignoring the alarmed looks housekeepers exchange as she stomps by and Winky's pleas. For the first time, she manages not to get hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of Tom's mansion as she quickly finds the sweeping, marble double staircase and descends it to start scouring the main floor for the game room - wherever that is. An irritable Kreacher tells her how to get there when she is forced to stop for directions, while a distressed Winky stumbles over her toes still trying to dissuade her. Hermione takes one right after another before at last dragging open the second door on the right of the pipe-organ.

"-what atrocious aim, Mulciber!" someone booms.

A snazzy pink dart whizzes through the air and pins the wall, half a foot away from the board on the other side of the room. Its holder – Mulciber – blames his skill on his beverage by waving a Budweiser about animatedly, tripping into a game of poker when he belches and turns green. The participants groan and pellet striped checkers at him, swearing while cards and fifty dollar bills flutter to the floor and rain down on his slumped form. Behind a polished mahogany bar, the bartender slides a margarita to a man with white blonde hair – Malfoy? – no, it's a face she hasn't seen before. Hermione bites her lip nervously, vividly aware of how out of place she has suddenly become. _Not safe, _her brain titters. They are too many close, male bodies. Too much liquor. Too much slurring laughter. Too many possible combinations equaling doom.

_No. Remember what you're here for, _she chastises herself, grabbing onto her anger and revving it back to life. She can't let the old fears blind her. The last thing she needs now is to be afraid, of all things.

"Hermione! What are you doing here?" a voice says, followed by the grinning face of Cygnus Black as he swaggers toward her. She flinches back and he falters, surprised. Then he glances at the cigarette in his hand, stamps it out, and starts coming again. _I don't like the smell of nicotine, _Hermione remembers telling him last night, and she isn't sure whether to be stupefied or amused that he thinks this is the reason why she recoiled. Before she can decide on one, however, he is in front of her.

"Well?" Cyg asks expectantly.

"Er…" Hermione flounders to remember what he said, fidgeting. "Well what-?"

"Ms. Granger is here crashing Mr. Voldemort's gathering," Winky answers for her, sounding just as exasperated as she looks. Cygnus blinks at Winky in astonishment, not having seen her before – but then, the woman is so short she barely reaches Hermione's shoulder, much less the shade of a lamp. "I tried to stop her," Winky goes on, clucking disapprovingly, "but she's very stubborn."

"Hm… Not stubborn. I would say, 'headstrong.'" Cyg nonsensically taps his nose and smiles in such a way that in another life, it can be imagined that he would be a pirate, or some sort of dark sorcerer's apprentice. At the moment, he's probably only very much amused by her theatrics, Hermione notes tartly. "I'd hate to get a whack from your noggin," he says, looking at her meaningfully. She flushes at the reminder that her tussle with Tom did not go unwitnessed last night.

"Oh, shut it," she grumbles, too low for Winky to hear. He sniggers.

"What are you really doing down here anyway?" Cyg questions, scanning her attire with a skeptical eye. "I daresay you didn't come for the party… Oh _no,_ don't tell me." He points at Hermione's forehead, like her deepest secrets are spelled out there, and she stares at his accusing digit quizzically. "You're looking for Voldemort again, aren't you?"

"I am." She frowns. When did she become so predictable? "Have you seen him by any chance?" she asks. "I need to talk to him."

"Of course you do." Cyg squints at her and Hermione realizes with sudden clarity how bizarre this entire ordeal must look to a stranger: a scrappy girl who seems to have popped out of nowhere searching for a famous artist she claims to know, living under his care, kissing him in public and calling him by his Christian name… It's very implicative. In fact, it sounds like one of those cheap romance tales where the heroine is swept off her feet in a whirl of rags-to-riches plotline, adored by the highly-esteemed broad who sees she's got a heart of gold underneath all the peasant clothes, and is so unconvincingly optimistic you can't put the damn thing down until it's finished.

Only in this story, there don't seem to be any golden hearts lying around.

Hermione is distracted when Cygnus gestures toward the back, shaded eyes on a group lingering there. "Voldemort's over there, if you want to speak with him," he tells her, and grins for some unfathomable reason. "Tell his highness I say hello."

With that, Cygnus saunters away (probably back to whatever mysterious pit he crawled out of) and a significantly less distraught Winky tags along with him. Hermione scans the group he indicated and spots a tall figure balancing a crystal tumbler filled with amber liquid in the middle of it, smirking at some nameless joke – Tom. _Well, he certainly looks_ _like royalty,_ she takes a short, tense breath. He's had her locked up all day and still has the gall to be down here hosting a get together? She envisions herself marching up to him, demanding that he release her immediately, and embarrassing him in front of all his privileged little friends if he refuses – they're probably all art snobs who do nothing but drink booze and talk about different ways to mix paint all day, she reassures herself. And if the odds are in her favor, maybe he'll even lose that rotten temper of his and kick her out so he can repair his immaculate reputation. Meanwhile, Winky would have witnessed the scene and – out of contempt or pity – let her out of here with a few bucks in her pocket to help her make her way…

Hermione shakes herself. This is no time for fantasizing. She has a better plan than that one, and while it may not be the most ideal, it's functioning. All she has to do is follow through with it.

Nonetheless, her heart gives an irrefutable squeeze when Tom looks up and sees her watching him. She cools her expression, even as his face goes blank with surprise, and walks over with every ounce of false confidence she can summon. Ignoring the way her palms sweat under the surrounding men's speculative glances, denying the uneven staccato of her heart, she smooths back her hair._ I'm not a child anymore. I am a full-grown adult, independent and deserving. I am not irrational. I am in full-control..._

Hermione stops before the small group Tom sits with, effectively putting an end to whatever conversation they'd been having and flashing her best smile. "So is this what you do when you're away on business, Voldemort?" she asks perkily. "Lock women in the spare bedroom and bring out the liquor to keep your chums around?"

There's a half-choked sputter, which she ignores, and a tiny smile twitches Tom's mouth as he gazes up at her. But his left brow lifts ever so slightly, the gesture seeming to ask _just what do you think you're doing here? _Hermione turns her head slightly to hide her face from the others when she mouths back: _socializing._

"Voldemort, you appear to have been holding out on us," a man with shoulder-length brown hair accuses, making them both look away. He flashes a winning smile at the young man sitting beside him, who agrees and calls him Avery. "Aren't you going to introduce us to your…new friend?" The word _friend _has a double meaning Hermione immediately decides she doesn't like.

"Friend?" she repeats, widening her eyes. "But I'm afraid you're mistaken. Voldemort and I aren't friends at all." Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione notes the way Tom's fingers tighten around his wine glass with a vindictive glee, and Avery's eyebrows lift. She's digging her own grave here, perhaps, but she's also inching closer to freedom. _Slowly, but surely. _"In fact, I despise him," she goes on obliviously. "He's keeping me here against my will."

They all burst into shocked laughter at that, making playful jabs at Tom's questionable status with the opposite sex and his private habits, like it's all a good, big joke. Hermione turns back to Tom expectantly, who appears unfazed. She frowns._Not enough. _But how to be more direct in her efforts?

"What's all this about?" inquires Mulciber, who has wandered over and looks a distinct shade less viridescent.

"Oh, we've just met Voldemort's prisoner, that's all." Avery winks at her. Their inside joke has become famous in the span of seconds. "I do wonder how you two met – ah, I apologize, but I don't seem to have caught your name…?"

"Hermione," she supplies without missing a beat. She sits down and the men inch forward where they're sprawled on the suede sofas, like children eager for a bedtime story. Her nerves spike at the shrinking distance between them all, but she chokes back the spurt of irrational terror and composes herself. This is her one shot at showing Tom Riddle things are different now, that _she _is different - not a little girl that can be easily mastered.

"Yes, yes, _Hermione,"_ Avery says companionably, putting a reminiscent emphasis on her name, as if saying it himself makes them long lost friends. He smiles so wide that the grin stretching his mouth carves into his cheeks, peeling all the ruddy flesh around it back until he resembles a relentlessly cheerful jack-o'-lantern. Hermione sustains her pleasant expression. "Would you be so kind as to tell us how you met this strapping young lad here?" he pushes, glancing at Voldemort.

Hermione blinks, taken off guard by that, and a whirl of images bombard her. _Cramped room, buckling bookshelves, a page with a tear down the middle, Oliver Twist – no, Great Expectations; a boy in the beaten armchair that smells like mildew, she wants to bite her nails for some reason but he's holding her hand, smiling at her, laughing…_

"I…" Her voice wavers. She clears her throat and starts again, vividly aware of all the eyes watching her. She avoids looking at the ones that intimidate her most of all, doing her best to sound upbeat. "I think we met in a library, if that matters."

"A library, of course," Mulciber mutters dumbly, rendered stupid by his drunken stupor. "Always the intellectual, aren't you, Voldemort?"

"Oh pipe down, Mully, and let the girl get on with it," someone else snaps. There is shushing while Hermione collects herself.

"Yes, well, we were children then," she elaborates. "And Voldemort was rather anti-social-"

"Anti-social? But that's ridiculous!"

"Oh no, not at all. To-_Voldemort_ was very different back then. He hardly ever spoke. He was a rather unique child, if that surprises you." _Not at all, _they assure, and chuckle obligingly. Hermione makes herself smile with them. "When I met him for the first time, I really didn't know what to make of him actually – in fact, I think I hid for about half an hour behind the shelves hoping he wouldn't see me," she says to their immense delight. "You see, he was drawing, so he didn't notice me at all. He wouldn't notice a Nazi invasion so long as he had that sketchbook…" A broad-shouldered man snorts. Hermione bites her lip. "Yes, well, I went over to see the picture... and..."

_Tom stares at their interlocked hands, then his dark eyes slowly lift to hers, pausing on her grin._

"And?" Mulciber probes, leaning in.

"I forget." She waves a dismissive hand at their incredulous caws, drily adding, "Who knows? Maybe he tried to sever me with a pencil-"

"-and you were best friends ever since," finishes Yaxley, who is one of the last surviving post-impressionists and once worked alongside Manet in a resistant France. He smirks. "Oh, pardon me- you're 'enemies'_, _correct?"

_Enemies._ Unable to stop it, Hermione's eyes drift to Tom – and instantly drop when she sees he's already staring back at her. Bizarrely, a needle of guilt stabs at her, like an abrupt finger prick. "That's the idea," she says, laughing lightly.

"I disagree."

The rest startle at the interjection. It's a surprise to hear from Tom, so still he could be one of the tiny bronze cast figurines posing on their lit pedestals in the sleek game room, or perhaps a statue sculpted from the spotless granite flooring. His eyes are steady on his glass as he continues, "How can you decide where two people stand if you only have one side of the story? That sort of bias changes the tale entirely… sometimes it even distorts your perception of the characters. If you know a story like this – from one perspective, without ever hearing the other – then you'll never really know the story at all. It's unfinished, underdeveloped." He looks up at last, and his eyes go straight to Hermione when he murmurs "incomplete."

There's a beat of thoughtful silence. Hermione stands, feeling embarrassed when _he _is supposed to be the one who is mortified this time, feeling childish and petty instead of grown, a little ashamed. She doesn't understand why he hasn't exploded, why mocking him didn't work. He's so vain, her jabs at him should have made him explode into a black rage by now. Why is he so composed, so insufferably collected? She doesn't understand. All she knows is that the conversation around them has taken up a new topic, revolving around some artist in Beijing.

When Hermione leaves, Tom follows her out.

The door shuts behind them. She paces to the opposite side of the hall and turns around. Tom isn't wearing a jacket, just pin-striped slacks and a silk black vest over an Oxford shirt, she observes. He arcs two neat brows at her, the picture of pretension. Completely oblivious to the fact that he has just presented her with the perfect opportunity.

"Care to tell me what that was all about?" he inquires.

Hermione shrugs. "It was nothing really, I just wanted to get to know your friends, that's all." His eyes roll at _friends _and her brain snags on the detail, though she doesn't comment on it. "Care to tell me why I'm here?" she quips.

"Sure," Tom says easily, surprising her. That surprise dissolves when he adds, "Over dinner."

"Don't do that. Don't give me an ultimatum."

He scoffs. "Like you're in any position to gamble."

Hermione flushes. Any pretense of the remote, untouchable Voldemort she saw minutes ago is clearly gone, only leaving behind the unfailingly arrogant young man before her – who is ten times more difficult to deal with. She wars with herself for a minute, grits her teeth, and pretends to concede to him. "Alright," she says tightly. "Tell me over dinner, then call me a taxi so I can leave this hellhole immediately afterward."

Tom scowls_. _Triumph dances through Hermione and her eyes slip, licking the skin adjoining his jaw and white throat – she looks away quickly, blinking. She needs to focus. She has to stay here until she's able to find a job and support herself outside of Tom's influence, and to do that she has to pretend she can't get out of here fast enough. _Which shouldn't be too troublesome. _Still, her patchwork plan has to be carried out carefully. She needs to make Tom think she'll do whatever it takes to get rid of him – and if he wants her here as badly as he says he do, then he'll agree to bargain with her. She'll set the terms of their temporary contract, thus ensuring her safety while she is forced to remain here, and deceive Tom into being on his best behavior… and most importantly, into leaving her alone.

"If you want to go afterwards, you may," Tom finally says. "I won't contact you ever again after that."

She nods.

_He doesn't mean it, _Hermione has to remind herself for unknown reasons, while Tom excuses himself to dismiss his guests. _He lies all the time, so it only makes sense that he sounds so convincing._ _He wants me to stay._But her thoughts are interrupted when Winky reappears to guide her to the dining room, chattering happily about a conversation she had with Cygnus at the party as they make their way. Inside the dining room, the chandelier shimmering overhead winks at Hermione as if it knows what glorious entertainment it is about to witness.

"Do you want to change into something…more fitting, Ms. Granger?" Winky asks, staring at her with a subtly creased brow. Hermione answers in the negative and absently requests that Winky not call her _Ms. Granger. _It's too formal. Winky smiles and corrects, "Hermione."

The door opens behind them and Winky turns, although Hermione doesn't move an inch. As soon as her pert, small, round face blooms into a blinding smile though, she knows who is there. Tom has that...effect on people. "Hello Mr. Voldemort," Winky greets. "Dinner will be out in a moment. Dobby is just warming it up."

Tom must nod or make some other sign of acknowledgement, because Winky beams once more and waltz out of the room, presumably in the direction of the kitchen. Hermione sits still at the table and fights the urge to turn around. She doesn't like Tom being somewhere she can't see him, it puts her at a disadvantage, it makes her feel cautious, anxious-

"I hope you like duck," Tom says conversationally, sitting down across from her and lazily shrugging off his vest for no apparent reason except to make her uncomfortable. "Dobby hasn't made anything else for a week."

"I know." She clears her throat. "I've been eating the dinners too, if you might recall." _You should recall it anyway, since you sent me halfway around the world for possibly psychopathic reasons._

Tom pauses in the act of unfolding a napkin on his lap and studies her. "Yes, that's right." The three words are pointed: a warning to be on her best behavior. He doesn't seem like somebody who ever went to an orphanage, Hermione reflects jealously. Is that because of his new lifestyle, or the well-rounded environment at his old prep school, Hogwarts? Or is it a combination of the two? It feels extremely bizarre to have to wonder about his personality, to not be certain of it. So far, she hasn't been right at all about this _Mr. Voldemort_. He hasn't been easy to provoke or unhealthily covetous, or any of things he was as a child. It makes her a little mournful, although by all means she should be relieved the reckless, predaceous Tom of the past is gone – or at least, hidden better.

But the Hermione of the past is gone too. This is precisely what she must prove to him.

They eat, and everything about the situation feels stilted and awkward, like they're strangers. Where at this time last night, they yelled and hit and clashed teeth and tongue, in this moment they sit in stony silence. When he isn't looking, Hermione searches for signs of their tussle on Tom's face, but he's unblemished as always. She squints at a square of skin on his chin that seems paler than the rest, and a satisfied smile turns her lip. Make up. He's wearing make up to cover the bruise.

Vengeance, she thinks, feels satisfactory.

Tom sets his fork and knife down, and the time for smiling is over.

"I believe you had some questions for me, Hermione. I'm willing to answer them now, if you're ready," he says politely. Too politely. But of course, now she is speaking to Mr. Voldemort. The Tom Riddle she saw in the hall minutes ago disappeared sometime between then and now. She frowns, feeling an out-of-place disappointment.

"Well… yes." _Too uncertain._ Hermione starts over, sitting taller. "That is, I want to know why you've brought me here. I don't really care about this supposed promise of yours, I just want to know what your intentions are."

"Because you don't believe I'm telling you the whole truth," he finishes.

Embarrassed by her own transparency, Hermione glares at him. "Well, you've never told me the truth before, now have you?" she says defensively.

"_Never_ is a big generalization."

Her eyes narrow. "It's close enough."

Tom nods, allowing that. "You're right. I lied to you often. I'm cruel by nature." His uninflected tone and the harsh words make an odd combination, as if he's reciting a tragic accident he's told so many times it has lost all meaning to him. Hermione frowns.

"Yes, but…" She stares at him, nonplussed. "Wait, are you actually _admitting_ to that?"

Tom chuckles. "Of course I am," he says. "I hurt you, I manipulated you, I used you, I left you, and in the end I destroyed you," he lists blandly. "I regret none of it, because I thrived off every second of it. I would do it all again, because I am not a good person, Hermione, and unfortunately for you, I am inexplicably drawn to you. I can see you hate me for that, but I don't expect you to understand my reasoning. I only tell you, because you asked." He cocks his head to the side, scanning her medically. "And in truth, I missed you. Does that answer your question?"

Hermione looks at him for a stunned minute. She swallows down the lump in her throat. "You wouldn't know the truth if it slapped you in the face."

The iced eyes sharpen. A wisp of Tom peeks out from behind the empty mask, seething. "Don't tell me what I do and don't know," he says coldly.

"Why now?" she demands, and detests the way her voice shakes. "Why am I here _now_? What's different? Why not cut off the money supply three or four years ago, and make me come here then? What aren't you telling me-?"

"I told you, Hermione." Tom's hand covers hers. She jerks back, but he doesn't let her go anywhere, catching her fingers before she can pull away totally. A sudden image pervades her mind and she hates herself for it: _Tom holding her hand for all to see, twirling his fingers through hers, kissing the tips and sucking them and blowing on them... _"I miss you." He searches her gaze, trying to pick it apart and figure out the way she ticks. To get inside her. "Tell me why you're acting like this."

"Acting? Like what?"

"Don't play dumb, Hermione. Naivety doesn't suit you." Tom's voice suddenly has all the fatal edges of a razorblade. His condescension burns her. "You look ready to crawl out of your skin because I'm touching you, you hated it when I kissed you last night, and just now you turned into Miss Popularity - which you have _never _even faintly resembled, I might add. So who are you trying to impress?"

"Impress?" she echoes, disgusted. "Oh, of course, because if I'm not head over heels for you, Tom, then there _must _be someone else."

"Oh, I doubt your feelings for me have changed," he says confidently. At her look of pure loathing, he smirks. "In fact, I think they've intensified."

_Stay calm. _Hermione takes a deep breath, then another, before speaking. "Did it ever occur to you that who I am might have absolutely nothing to do with you? That I've moved on?"

"Not for one second."

Her mouth thins. "Well then, you're been quite mislead."

"No, I haven't." He caresses her hand with his opposite one, tracing the bumps and dips of her knuckles carefully. It tickles. She shivers, repulsed, and Tom's teasing smile transforms into a sneer. "Tell me the truth, Hermione," he orders, tightening his grip. "Tell me how you feel."

"Angry." It's a whisper. She's bitten her lip too hard and it tastes like metal when she licks it. _Blood._ "I feel angry and resentful and filled with...hatred. That's what I feel…for you, Tom. Because of you." It feels good to say it, to not play this game of tea party and pretend anymore. She wants to hurt him suddenly - to hurt him bad and good – with words, with a knife, with her bare hands, she doesn't' care. To, like a grudging child, hurt him as he has hurt her. She wants justice. She doesn't want to be the bigger person, to walk away with her head held high and let bygones be bygones. No, she wants revenge. She wants it all. She has nothing.

She smiles hollowly. "So I suppose you're right, Tom. You destroyed me." _So just leave me alone._

The haughty knowingness abandons Tom's expression. His brows furrow and he searches her face, like unsaid answers are waiting there. "And what else? What else… do you feel?"

"Nothing."

Tom stares at her. Waiting for her to take it back. She doesn't.

He lets go of her and looks at the silver cutlery between them pensively. She doesn't know what he expected to gain from seeing her again. She doesn't know what _she _expected. Whenever she pictures this moment – and she has, often – it begins with Tom seeing her married and happy (however improbable that actually is) with kids, a family he can envy but never have. Now, girl eyelashes Hermione has marveled at more times than she cares to admit flutter as Tom looks back up at her, – boy of her dreams, man of her nightmares – scanning her face. Something in that dark gaze makes her feel sad and lost and lonely inside.

She regrets lying when he looks at her like that.

_It's just the angel eyes, _she thinks fiercely. _He's trying to guilt you. _She must stick to the plan, which is nearly complete now. The only thing left to make her deception perfect is the gamble.

Tom's usual charming smile is stilted and brittle when it makes its gallant return. "Nothing else?" he confirms. "So I was that fucking awful to you, hm? A real monster? A living nightmare?"

"Yes." She licks the last of blood from the cut on her lip and stares at her napkin ring, playing with it to avoid his churning gaze. Her heart is pounding so hard she's sure he can see the organ throwing itself with abandon against her chest. "You tortured me, Tom," she says softly. "You know that."

"I didn't do it on purpose," he retorts. "It's just the way I am. I thought you knew that and you never seemed unhappy. You liked all of my attention, you know it-"

"That's a lie," she interrupts sharply. "I didn't like any of it. You were a jealous control freak who never let me talk to people or make any friends so you could keep me all to yourself-"

"You're exaggerating."

"You're delusional!" She takes a deep breath to cool all the simmering rage she's kept bottled inside for years and years, continuing solemnly, "You're greedy and narcissistic. You care for no one and nothing but yourself." These are the precise words she's told herself for six years. They're reasons to stay away from him.

"If that were true, you wouldn't be here," Tom says, in a voice that's so gentle it could be a lullaby. She looks up. "And on the contrary, I do care for something other than myself. It just so happens that who I care for has abruptly decided she does not desire my affections and cannot even stand my…seemingly _repulsive_ touch." He smiles a cruel, terrible smile. "Or am I lying to you again? Tell me if I am, baby_._"

Hermione's eyes are piercing. Deliberately, she says, "Don't call me that."

He chuckles, low and scornful. "And what if I do? Are you going to leave? Yell? Stomp your feet? Throw a little tantrum? Tell me more about what a horrible person I am and how much you claim to hate me? I'll know you're lying. You can't lie to me."

"I can do whatever I want," she snarks.

"I like how feisty you've become." He appears thoughtful. "It's sexy."

Hermione's face heats. She gets to her feet, fists balled, and Tom rises too, ready to follow. "I'm leaving," she tells him and waits, because this is it, the bait, her last and final card to play. All she needs is for him to take it. _Take it. Tell me to stay. Tell me I'm not going anywhere._

Tom gazes at her, eyes shadowed and unreadable. And he says, "No."

"No?" She sounds indignant, but inside she is skipping for joy. _It worked. Oh, thank God, the damn thing worked_. She shakes her head. "Don't be ridiculous, Tom," she says, moving toward the door. "The dinner is over, so I am by all means free to go."

"You promised-"

She whips around, eyes nothing but crackling slits, and Tom grinds to a halt. "I don't _care_ what I promised, Tom," she snaps. "I don't even remember it! I don't care about any of this!"

He's furious. _Fantastic, _she thinks. _Let him be. _"Oh really?" he fumes. "None of it?"

"Nothing."

"So if I, say, killed myself right here and now-" He saunters to the table and snatches up the carving knife for the roasted duck, flipping it so the silver curve of the blade is pressed into his wrist. Hermione freezes. "-then you wouldn't care? Not even a little?"

She says nothing, watching him warily. Tom shrugs. "Alright." Beads of crimson blood interrupt the smooth flow of his alabaster skin as he slices through it– Hermione gasps, lunging toward him and upsetting the banquet of dishes as she makes a grab for the knife, knocking it out of his hand and sending the lethal blade spinning to the floor. She catches his wrist in a vise-like grip, panting. "Are – you – _insane?"_

Tom smirks – and Hermione realizes that, of course, he never was going to kill himself, or really even make a worthy injury. It was a trap. He just wanted to prove that he's right about her… and she let him do it. _God damn it. _Staring at his arm, Hermione sees he barely nicked himself. It could be a paper cut.

"So you _do_ care," he says sweetly.

"Go to hell," Hermione replies, dropping his arm and moving back. Perfunctorily, she dusts off the gunk on the back of her skirt. _That's the last suicide I ever stop, _she thinks begrudgingly. Tom watches her clean up with an inscrutable expression before he reaches over and lightly brushes a chunk of cranberry sauce off her shoulder. She stills. He withdraws his hand slowly, as if reluctant.

The awkward silence ends when Tom says, so quietly she barely hears him, "Stay."

Hermione looks away. "You know I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because things are different now." The speech she rehearsed in her head hours before this comes to mind automatically, but it feels phony and cheap now. Tom would never believe it. Besides that, she realizes she doesn't want to say it. She couldn't possibly.

"Stay, please," he whispers.

It's the _please_ that makes her look at him. Lifting her head, Hermione stares at Tom good and hard, and she's baffled. _Please_? That doesn't make any sense at all, because Tom Riddle never says please, and certainly not to her. The word goes against every fiber of his being, of the fragile, quaky understanding she has of him, it goes against the very fabric of the universe. How can he say please when it's Tom's way or no way? He can make her submit to him, if he really wants to, so why would he bother asking?

She doesn't know. All she knows, or at least, suspects, is that something has changed in him. She doesn't know what it is, she doesn't really know who _he_ is anymore… and that scares her more than a threat from Tom ever could. It scares her most of all.

"I need to leave," she says, and suddenly means it. Damn the consequences. She'll figure out what to do next when she gets there.

Tom, who had been moving closer, stops cold. "I can't let you do that."

Hermione scoffs. "Of course you can. It's not like you'll have a guilty conscience. Just get one of your numerous private cabbies to take me where I need to go and we can be out of each other's hair forever. I never asked you to babysit me, or to pity me, or… or for any of this." At his silence, she adds, a little desperately, "Let me go home, Tom."

The angel eyes aren't even faintly cherubic now. "You don't have a home," Tom says simply, and something in her body breaks.

It feels like a bone, except larger than that, deeper than that, like it's rooted inside her organs, connected to a hundred thousand intricate veins and bodily webbing, the heart of everything, the brain, the control system – and Tom has just reached his hand inside her and wrenched it out. "Y-yeah, I know, I don't have a home anywhere." She blows out a gust of air. "You, on the other hand, in your big fancy mansion with your European cars and servants waiting on beck and call…" She smiles ruefully. "You've got it all, Tom, don't you? Everything you ever dreamed of. Everything I ever dreamed of and more, certainly. That's what you brought me here for, isn't it? To show me. To rub it all in."

Tom sighs. "That's not what I-"

"But then, how _would_ you know what I've been dreaming about?" she plunges on. "We haven't seen each other in years. You don't know me anymore, Tom, and I don't know you. You can't disappear from someone's life for six years and come back expecting to meet the same girl you left behind in an orphanage. That's not the way reality works. I've changed. You've changed. We don't know each other anymore." And as she says the words, she realizes with an overwhelming dread that they're true, and they're a hundred times better than the speech she prepared. _They're absolutely, infallibly true._ And judging by the look on Tom's face, he's prepared to do whatever it takes to change that. Her plan worked. She should be thrilled, euphoric.

But all she can think about is how hideous it is not to know your own best friend at all.

Because how can she not know _Tom? _Her Tom? Her terrible, selfish, flawed, umbrageous Tom? Who used to whisper things in her ear, things only he wanted her to know, who used to walk all over her heart like a rug but would be at her side in an instant if anyone dared try to hurt her. Tom, Tom, Tom. How did this happen? Why does it feel like 1942 again, like the center of the world has fallen out from under her? Why does she want the impossible – for him to care about her, _really_care – so awfully, so irrevocably, and with such a savage brutality it feels like the desire is going to kill her in her sleep?

She shouldn't see a little boy when she looks at Tom Riddle. They're not children anymore. They're not in love.

They're nothing but strangers.

"What if it were different this time?" Tom says.

It's the perfect thing for him to say, but Hermione doesn't feel anywhere near relieved. "Different how?" she asks, just assiduously enough to sound wary.

"You say we don't know each other anymore." He pauses. "If you stayed... then that would change. We would start over."

Hermione fixes him with an analytic stare. "Start over as what?"

"As whatever you want to be."

There it is. The bargaining chip, in her hands. Finally.

"Maybe." She fidgets. "But there would have to be…boundaries. I mean, I'd like to be friends again, Tom-" The words are cockroaches in her mouth. "-but we can't be anything else. That's the only way I'll stay."

Hermione waits.

Tom nods.

And the weight of this tenuous agreement is a burdening creature, solidifying when a grin slowly creeps up his mouth, and the angel eyes glint at her. She doesn't know what he thinks or feels, and she tells herself she doesn't care either. She's succeeded in the gamble. Next, she finds a job, packs her things, and high-tails it. She can do this. She must.

She's going to win the fight this time.

They are not children anymore.


	11. Chapter 11

"Now what are _you_ doing holed up in here all day?" an eerily familiar voice taunts.

Hermione nearly leaps out of her skin at the unexpected – not to mention, _unwelcome _– interruption. She hadn't even heard the door open. _How long was he standing there? _she thinks, but she chokes the thought so it doesn't show on her face when she turns around. Tom is leaning against the doorjamb with a Shirley Temple in-hand. For once, he's not in his swanky suit, but wearing an open button-down over an undershirt and slacks held up by suspenders. He looks hot off the press.

Hoping she is discreet enough not to be observed, she smoothly shuffles the article of job listings behind her back out of sight.

"Ahem." Tom arches a brow at her stare. "Hermione?"

"Oh, yes." She searches for a more impressive response. It's both irrefutable and strange to be so formal around him, constantly at a loss for words – but it's been this way for the past week, since they came to the terms of their _agreement_. If they can be friends and play nice, then Hermione will stay here in the mansion with Tom until she finds her own accommodations. The only trouble with that is she's got to find a job first, and none too many are inclined to see a woman her age outside of the kitchen… or doing anything other than popping out ruddy, blue-eyed babies.

On top of that, Tom has a reputation of falling short on his promises.

Tom's cheerful expression dims. He wades over and her muscles coil when he stops beside the desk she sits at, peripherals zooming in on a poorly concealed _Help Wanted! _ad for Marley's milkshake bar. But he only looks at her, absent-mindedly running his fingertip along a blue glass paperweight strapping down a pile of this week's newspapers. "You're not avoiding me, are you?" he asks.

Hermione laughs, and the sound rings as repulsively false even to her ears. "Of course not. Why would I do that?"

Tom's eyes narrow a touch, but he doesn't press the subject, and she awkwardly shifts her gaze to somewhere else. "Warm, isn't it?" she says, which is a ridiculous understatement. The summer heat is downright baking them, even with the tall formidable windows wheezing in a tuft of breeze here or there, and the French doors thrown wide open. Sweat drips down her leg, cold and slow. The catastrophic bun that she's wrestled her hair into is frizzing to astronomical proportions, she can feel it floating around her ears like a thunder cloud in the humidity. She grabs a magazine and starts fanning herself with it, trying not to pant.

"I thought it was rather cool in here," Tom says, smirking at the bead of sweat on her forehead. He tips his glass toward her, the golden liquor inside swirls entrancingly. "But if you're uncomfortable, you can have a sip. Champagne," he adds, at her questioning stare.

She blinks at the glass dangling from his fingers. It looks delicious. "I don't drink in the morning," she says coldly.

"Suit yourself." Tom meanders around the room – Hermione refuses to think of it as _her _room, even after all these weeks – and he leaves the glass on her desk. She snatches it off an article before a stain can set in. When he isn't looking, she sips at the champagne lightly, sucking an ice cube into her mouth to rub over her teeth. She tries to ignore the reminder that her mouth is where Tom's rested a minute ago.

He pauses in front of an end table, where a metal sculpture of what may have been a man or a very skinny elephant stood a few days ago, until Hermione had Winky remove it and help her put the typewriter there in its place. Tom fingers the buttons, glossy and untouched. "Why haven't you used this?" he asks her.

Hermione keeps her eyes on the champagne, which is nothing but ice now. She feigns nonchalance as she corkscrews her finger around the ice cubes. _Clink-clink, _they sing, before she pops two between her lips. "Oh, I don't need it," she replies.

"But you love writing."

"I did." She hurries on before he can interrogate her. "And it's so expensive, I'd feel guilty for using it."

"That's preposterous," Tom snorts. "It's for you, a gift."

"I don't want any gifts." Her voice is too sharp for small talk. His dark eyes narrow at her.

"Why is that?" he says, in a low, cold voice.

"Because I… I find them insulting. I can fend for myself." She stares at him hard. "You should know that I don't like charity." _Because even though you pretend otherwise, you were once a nobody from Wool's Orphanage. Just like me._

Tom seems to be about to argue with her, but instead he bites the inside of his cheek and slides a hand through his black hair, turning his back on , she feels satisfied by his frustration. She crunches on an ice cube contently.

"Don't you still want to be a writer?" he mutters.

She starts, so taken off guard that a shocked laugh escapes her. "Me, a writer? What ever gave you that idea?"

"You always read…" He turns toward her, looking accusatory. "Or have you given up on books, too?"

She flinches. It isn't fair, the way he throws her old, precious dreams at her like swords. "Reading requires time, which I don't have a lot of lately," she says tonelessly.

Tom stares at her. His brow creases and he looks so boggled that it is almost charming. Apparently, a Hermione Granger who reads less is a Hermione not to be conceived. He presses, "But you still _like _to read, don't you?"

"Of course I do." She sighs. "I do. Books are… were… They're everything to me. Of course, anyone enjoys a good story, like _Wuthering Heights _or _The Lady of Shallot _or-" She realizes Tom is staring at her intently, like he really cares about what she is saying, and she breaks off. Why is she going on like this? "Never mind."

She clears her throat, reaching for another ice cube. They all melted. "I just don't have the time for that sort of thing anymore. It's pointless anyway, reading stories. They're not real. They don't matter." Her voice is low.

Feeling very, very hot all of a sudden – why did the ice cubes have to melt, blast it? – Hermione stands up and goes onto the balcony outside, hoping for a sympathetic waft from the Hudson River below. It doesn't come and she stands there, slinging sweat off her forehead and cursing herself for opening up to him. What does Tom Riddle care about her interest in books for? _He doesn't care. _

But he comes outside anyway, casting a distasteful glance at the cooking sun, as if its brilliance offends him.

"Let's go somewhere," he says out of the blue. She looks at him. Tom cocks a thumb at the city skyline, a stumpy forest of metal across the river. "I know a little place I think you'll like. We can relax, chat some more." His eyes skim her skirt, and although she knows it's only because there are water stains on the expensive striped silk from the ice, she still blushes. Luckily, he doesn't see. "You can eat more ice cubes there, if you'd like."

Hermione pretends not to have heard his last comment. "Is this place anything like the Fat Lady?" she says cautiously.

"Not at all." He smirks. "It's much more…your speed."

_He means conservative. Bastard. _She restrains a fierce glare, just barely, and Tom's haughty smile grows in size. "Will it only be us?"

He shrugs. "That, and the other customers, I suppose."

Going out, having drinks, making conversation, just the two of them: it all sounds frighteningly like a date. And judging by the mischievous gleam in his eye, Tom thinks so too. _Oh no. _"Well, I do have a lot of work to do today," Hermione hedges. At his disbelieving look, she reluctantly adds, "But I suppose…we could go, for a little while."

"Excellent-" he begins triumphantly.

"That is, of course, if we invited Cygnus along."

Tom scowls. "Cygnus?" The way he says it immediately brings to the mind the image of a large, slimy worm or slug.

Hermione rolls her eyes. "He's a person, not an extraterrestrial subspecies. Besides, I thought you two were friends."

He raises a brow. "Do you honestly believe I have friends, Hermione?"

She blinks, thinking of how derisive he was when she brought up his friends last night, how Cygnus referred to him – elusively, sometimes carefully, but never endearing. She frowns. "Point taken." Doggedly, she persists, "Still, I'd like it if he came with us. We could have a swell time." Internally, she winces at her words. Calling their outing _swell _is probably more than a stretch.

"Black…" Tom sighs heavily, like a put-out child who's been told he's not getting the toy Corvette he asked for Christmas, but a wooden truck instead. "Must we invite him?"

"Yes."

He sneers at her sharp tone, fixing his arms. Sleeves down and every inch of his body covered save his neck, feet, and head, he should by all means be at melting point by now, but instead he seems immune to the suffocating heat. Hermione scans his immaculate pale skin critically, noting the light sheen of sweat misting his hollow throat. _Good, _she thinks, _at least he's somewhat human._

"Hermione."

"Ye-es?" She lifts her eyes, frowning in confusion at his expectant look. "Sorry. What is it?"

"I said we'd better get going if you want to catch your friend," Tom replies, smirking around the words in a suspiciously smug manner. "And you ought to change your outfit to something a little less…wet." Again, the dark eyes assess her wardrobe.

_Wet. _Even though he's talking about the water stains, Hermione's body temperature kicks up another ten degrees. She mumbles a hasty, senseless excuse, and escapes to the bathroom before Tom can make any more wise cracks. _Cygnus, _she chants. _At least Cygnus is coming._

But whether or not Cyg will be enough to make Tom keep his less-than-welcome thoughts to himself is another gamble entirely.

As it happens, the "little place" Tom has in mind ends up being one of the most popular joints in all of New York City. Called _Flourish & Blotts,_ the lounge resides on the twenty-eighth floor of a high-rise on 42nd Street, and a line of at least two hundred people hug the length of the street as they wait to be let inside. When Tom and Hermione arrive, however, Tom whisks them right by the never-ending line without a second glance, straight to the entrance where a doorman lets them inside. Hermione is about to ask how they could jump the whole line like that when she remembers just who she is here with: _Voldemort_.

They ride up a brass elevator and Hermione glances sideways at Tom, trying to see where the orphan boy ends and the world famous artist begins. She realizes she hasn't even seen any of his work since they were teenagers, and briefly wonders whether she wants to at all.

Inside _Flourish & Blotts_, it's not jam-packed like Hermione had thought it would be, but airy and wide-spaced, with gleaming granite floors and natural light streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows. Hundreds of old-fashioned chandeliers stocked with candles instead of light bulbs trail from the ceilings, but it's too warm for them to be lit. Stoic-faced wanderers are dressed to fashionable perfection where they sulk in corners or slurp drinks at the bar, and a wall of balconies gate cool wind inside. A single trumpet player puffs big band jazz in the background. Hermione scopes the floor of leather booths, frowning.

"I don't see Cygnus," she says. "Do you?"

Like her, Tom scans the lounge, but then his eyes light on something, narrowing marginally. And unless her eyes deceive her, Hermione is almost certain he grinds his jaw. She follows his gaze to find a young, gawky man in a V-neck sweater vest and glasses at a booth with two other companions. "Who's that?" she asks, surprised by the tension in Tom's suddenly stiff shoulders. She has the bizarre urge to put her hand on one and flatten it down until all the hot air inside depressurizes.

She clasps her hands behind her back.

"No one," Tom replies, very softly. He adjusts his tie – he changed before they left – and straightens, nodding toward the right side of the room, where a hatted Cygnus Black sits at an empty booth. "There's Black," he says absently, barely looking at her. "Excuse me, I'll be…just a minute." He strides off.

Hermione stares after him for a minute, bewildered, and glances back at the gawky man. He's pointing at the chandelier above his booth, talking animatedly. She frowns and turns away.

"Hello Cyg," Hermione greets, sitting down carefully. The crepe dress she stuck herself in makes her feel more uncomfortable than usual, and she resists the instinct to glance down at her chest and make sure all the buttons are done every other forty-five seconds.

"Hermione." Cygnus looks up with a resigned expression that surprises her. His overgrown bangs have fallen into his eyes and he pushes them back absently, squinting at her. "What the hell did you drag me along here for? All have you know I'm nursing a dynamite hangover. Your little friend really knows how to put it away."

"My friend?" she repeats.

"That maid." He waves a hand. "Wizebell."

"Oh, you mean Winky." She nods, although the idea of tiny Winky downing booze befuddles her. "Actually," she begins, "I invited you here because I wanted to ask you some…questions."

At the word _question_, a guarded shadow Hermione has never seen before sucks the light out of Cygnus's face. His eyes go hard and he automatically reaches for a cigarette in his coat pocket, but then seems to remember her aversion to the smell, and stops. "What kind of questions?" he demands.

Hermione rears at his aggression, stunned. Angry men are one combination that set all her nerves on high-end, and Cygnus has never struck her as the intrepid type. To see him like so now unnerves her. She swallows. "I only wanted to ask you about Voldemort."

"Voldemort?" The guarded look fades, but only slightly. "What about him?"

"Things I'd rather didn't get back to his knowledge," she says slowly, meaningfully, and stares him dead in the eye. The last of Cygnus's hackles flicker out of sight, leaving only uncertainty behind. He rubs his stubbly jaw thoughtfully.

"Well, you better hurry then," he finally says. Cyg glances nervously at the bar across the lounge, where Tom is bent on elbows over the glass counter and giving a clearly flustered barmaid a request. Whatever he went off to do before is obviously over now. _Time's almost out. _"Ordering drinks doesn't exactly take long."

"Right." Hermione breathes in deeply. "First question. How did Tom become Voldemort?"

Cygnus's eyes widen slightly. His eyes dart, down to the table, then up, and he says, "Well... I don't know the whole story. I mean I was only there for part of it-"

"That's fine," she quickly assures. "Just give me the condensed version."

Cygnus stares at her, looks at Tom, then swallows. "Alright. I can do…condensed." His voice is faint. "This isn't getting back to him, correct?" Hermione nods, although inside she is filing away the fact that Cygnus is concerned by Tom's feelings on their intervention. He nods. "OK. As you know, Tom and I knew each other back at Hogwarts. We ran in the same circle, along with a few other blokes I've since lost touch with, and the lot of us were…well-known at school. We were expected to do big things."

"Big things?" she questions.

"Get rich, marry young, make investments, get richer." He shrugs. "That all changed though, when Tom left Hogwarts. As far as I know, he went off the radar after going. He lost his scholarship and the whole Myrtle blow-out ruined his reputation - do you know about that? Yes? - well, I didn't see him for years afterward. In fact, about two years later, I was working at my father's law firm when he suddenly walks in one day and says 'Black, what the hell are you doing stapling papers?' See, I'd been quite invested in art once upon a time, but my family didn't believe art made any money, so I had to drop the hobby and join the family business… Long story short, Tom somehow convinced me to join him on this crazy scheme for us and a bunch of other guys to make it big. It's impossible to say no to him, I'm sure you know that."

"I do," Hermione assents.

"Well, he had the talent and I had all the connections to exploit that, so as they say…" He spread his hands. "The rest is history."

"And he became famous just out of that?" she asks skeptically.

"You asked for the short version."

Hermione purses her lips, contemplating that, but before she can say another word she sees who is making his way toward them with a tray of drinks. The interrogation is over. She'll have to ask the rest of her questions to someone less inclined to lie to her.

"Hermione, Black." The liquid inside the drinks Tom brought is amber, green-colored sugar circling the lip of the triangular glasses where a lime wedge dangles off the edge. "Drink these and weep."

"What is it?" Hermione questions, scrutinizing her glass. Cygnus has already downed his and is most decidedly not weeping.

Tom's smile is seraphic and toxic all at once. "Poison."

Brows raised, she slides the drink back.

He laughs quietly, pulls over another, and swipes a finger around the crystallized edge, coming up with a tipful of sugar. "Try some."

She grimaces. "No thanks."

"Come on, Fuddy-Duddy," Cyg laughs. Hermione glares at him.

Sighing, she tactfully transfers the sugar from Tom's fingertip to her own. She winces at the flare of sour-sweet on her tongue. It's good, but potent. She looks back up to see Cygnus staring at her with an inscrutable expression, and Tom gazing at a faraway couple swaying on the edge of the scene. His eyes hold no interest in what they see. He glances away, and finding her watching him, raises the poison's sugared lip.

"Want another taste?" he says innocently - but Hermione feels like he's asking another question completely. One that isn't innocent at all.

_Why did Cygnus lie about you? What did you do to get expelled from Hogwarts? What did you do after you left the orphanage? _They're all questions she has to find the answers to, but the most important question of them all looms over the rest like a knife over a chopping block. _Why is everyone so afraid of you?_

"No," she says, sitting back. "That's quite alright."

"Dobby, have you seen Winky?" asks Hermione.

Dobby, the head chef of a long list of kitchen attendees, is oddly intimidated by her question. He nervously scratches one of the huge ears poking out of his crepe chef hat, and the gesture makes Hermione briefly wonders if he and Winky are related. They're both extremely short, with slightly bat-like ears and the same large, froggish eyes. Come to think of it, Kreacher looks a bit like them, too…

"Me, seen Winky?" He smiles widely... the smile of a big fat fibber. "No, not since she whipped up the batch of Shirley Temples this afternoon."

"This afternoon? That was over four hours ago," Hermione says, flabbergasted. She squints at Dobby. "But… if you say so." The last bit is aimed to guilt him, but it doesn't seem to work.

He nods rapidly. "Yes, well, I do say so, so I guess you'll be on your way then?" He makes a desperate grab at one of the confections littering the pristine counters, nearly decapitating a woman peeling carrots when his hands fasten around a cannoli. He offers the pastry to her. "For you, Miss Wilkins?"

"Miss Granger," she corrects. She catches herself and adds, "I mean _Hermione._ Just call me Hermione."

"Of course, Miss…" His eyebrows – which are barely there, so white they are from old age – mesh together in perplexity. "Er, Hermione."

Hermione takes an appreciative bite of the cannoli as Dobby attempts to hurry her out of the kitchen, but once they reach the door, she stops and turns around. "Dobby, do you know what would go perfectly with this?" she says, with sudden revelation.

Dobby pauses, glances at the cannoli, then at her, with some intrigue. "Milk?" he suggests.

"Maybe." She sighs. "Though I have a bit of a sweet tooth tonight… Ah, I know! A Shirley Temple would go splendidly with this. Don't you think?"

Understanding dawns on Dobby's wrinkled, genial face, along with chagrin, and Hermione feels temporarily ashamed of herself for forcing him. Still, she wouldn't have to trick the poor man if he hadn't driven her to it. Why couldn't he just bring her to Winky?

"Yes, you're probably right," Dobby says heavily. "This way, Miss Wilkins."

This time, she doesn't bother to correct him.

Hermione follows him to the back of the kitchen, where there are two double doors he tells her lead to the storage closet. She hesitates on the threshold, feeling light-headed for a moment at the prospect of going inside, but when Dobby gives her a questioning look she quashes the emotion. Boiler rooms and storage closets have nothing in common, she tells herself.

Dobby pauses before opening the door. "Miss," he says uneasily. "I know I couldn't possibly ask you for any favors, but... but just know that Winky is a fine member of our staff here and one of the best housekeepers you could ever hope to find. Ever! Even if she does sometimes fall into a bit of a slump, she's still very dear to me, and to Mr. Voldemort, I'm sure. You should really know that." By the end of his declaration, Dobby's eyes are feverish and his cheeks are pink with passion. Hermione stares at him, not sure what to make of his statement.

Dobby sees her puzzled look, deflating. He mutters, "You'll see. After you, miss."

Hermione steps ahead of him and puts her hand on the door, wondering what she'll find on the other side of it, and pushes it enough to let her wriggle inside. She finds the storage room is large and neat, stacked with crates of food bought from local vendors and lit by drawstring light bulbs. Luckily, it's not at all similar to the one at Madame Pomfrey's seamstress shop, which had been dusty, dark, and claustrophobic.

"What is it?" she asks, not understanding, but stops when her eyes fall on the limp form strewn over a pile of flour sacks. She rushes over to it, grabbing a shoulder and shaking it. "_Oh my- _Winky? Winky, are you alright?" When the only noise Winky makes is a faint, insensible wheeze that smells strongly of Shirley Temple, Hermione pulls back, nostrils flared. _Your little friend really knows how to put it away, _Cygnus had said... but she hadn't imagined _this _was what he meant.

"Does this happen often?"

Dobby, whose taken off his hat and is now crumpling the material between his knobby-knuckled hands in agitation, shrugs. "Only when Mr. Voldemort throws parties here, miss, and then some on Sundays." He casts a worried look at his unconscious friend. "But she's a hard worker."

"She is an alcoholic," Hermione says carefully.

Dobby frowns and straightens (or he straightens as much as arthritis will allow, that is), sharply poking a finger in her direction. "Miss Hermione, I don't hold it against you for not knowing this, but that right there is a woman who has been hurt, hurt badly. And if sometimes taking a drink or two helps her remember that the world hasn't all gone to shit - excuse my language - then why hold that against her? But if you get her thrown out on the street, then, then-" He swells, puffing up to nearly twice his size, and Hermione steps back. "-Then you are not as compassionate as I thought you were," he finishes boldly.

Dobby beams at himself, apparently very proud of this speech, then falters, as if remembering something. He flushes and mutters, "Of course, it's not my place to judge you, Miss Hermione… or tell you what to do or…" Turning redder, he quickly says, "Oh, I'm very sorry! Please don't get us fired, Miss Wilk- sorry, Hermione-"

"Wait, wait," she interrupts, startled. "Who said anything about getting fired?"

Dobby freezes. "So...you're not going to…?"

"No. This is your business," Hermione says firmly. She frowns at Winky, who looks very awkward on the flour sack. "Is this really the only place you can put her?"

"Unfortunately, it is," Dobby sighs. "At least until the staff leave. For now, I can't risk taking her out of here. Someone could see us, and then we'd be done for – or at the very least, she would be."

Hermione bites her lip. "If this isn't too…invasive, what happened to Winky to make her like this?"

Dobby's expression darkens. "Her last employer was unkind." He shoves on his hat, which is wrinkled and a little limp from his fidgeting, nudging her back out the door. "I'd better leave it at that, it's not my place to tell you. Besides, you should get going, miss. Dinner starts soon. It's beef stew and quite good if I do say so myself, although I'm sorry about the Shirley Temple. Needless to say, we're out."

"No, that's fine." Hermione glances once more over her shoulder at the pathetic-looking Winky, before the door swings shut and cuts off her view. The hustle and bustle of the kitchen sweeps them up almost instantly, and she has to leap back to avoid being singed by the piping-hot breath of an oven when a nearby cook sweeps one open. Dobby brings them to the other side, leaving her on the exit. Before he can turn away, however, she calls him back once more.

"Yes, Miss Hermione?" he queries.

"Dobby, I was wondering…" She pauses and leans in, lowering her voice conspiratorially. Luckily, the people around them are too loud for her to be overheard. "Where is the telephone?"

Dobby's invisible eyebrows lift, folding the sallow skin on his forehead into rolls, and she can see in his shifting eyes that he's remembering Mr. Voldemort's request that she be denied access to the telephone. He lowers his voice, too, whispers, "Top floor, near the entrance to the attic, by the portrait of fruit."

Victory seizes Hermione and she has the all-consuming urge to laugh out loud in triumph – but she barely contains herself, settling for a brilliant smile at Dobby. "Thanks, Dobby," she says.

He blushes. "Thank _you, _miss."

Hermione lays in bed that night, listening to the distant prattle of crickets floors below, taking assurance in the set of Dobby's instructions she wrote down and stuffed inside her pillowcase. The stack of useless ads on her desk depresses her, but the potential of unraveling Tom's secrets dares a thrill down her spine. She's not sure what she's looking for in finding out more about Voldemort, finding out what she missed in the years they've been apart – closure? satisfaction? justice?

She just wants to know.

She remembers the way sweat tread down his neck on the balcony when he argued about Cygnus, how his cheek ticked at _Flourish & Blotts, _black eyes transforming into seething slits. His anger should have terrified her, made her vomit right then and there, but all she'd been thinking about was _what _could have set him so on edge…and if she touched him, whether he would forget about the fury, think only of her.

Bizarrely, the sight of sweat on him, in his jet-black hair, beading on the edge of his sharp brow, beating on his collarbones, makes her toss and turn as she claws for sleep. Suspenders tightening his pants around his thighs, accentuating his shape in both the front and back. She beats down the lump in her throat, pressing a hand to her jutting heartbeat and screaming at it to _shut up. _None of this means anything. It was so hot today, all that heat got to her head, made her think crazy things, that's all.

She squeezes her eyes shut in the darkness. Winky's face flashes behind her eyelids, as she followed Cygnus to the bar last night, as she lay strung like garland in the storage room. A hurt woman. Had her former employer been a man? Her stomach turns at the thought of what he could've done to turn Winky into a drunk. What would it have taken for Tom to make her like that? She had thought herself so ruined, but maybe she is not so destroyed, after all.

Maybe Tom is not as terrible as she thought. Before she can be certain of that, however, she needs to do her research… starting with a phone call to Abraxas Malfoy.


	12. Chapter 12

"Winky, can you help me with something?"

Ever since Hermione learned of Winky's habit to drink herself into stupors that land her in the kitchen's supply closet, she's taken to calling on the girl at every possible moment – even when it isn't entirely necessary. Whether this is for her own peace of mind or to keep Winky so busy she doesn't have time to traipse to the liquor cabinet downstairs – or both – is controvertible.

"What is it?" Winky sets down the basket of clothes on her hip and comes over. Her tiny body combined with big, slightly bulging hazel eyes and short brown hair cut in a bob would be pretty on a fatter face. She reminds Hermione of a restless hummingbird with a razor-sharp beak poised for whatever use it deems necessary.

"I don't need these anymore. Here." Hermione thrusts a pile of this past week's newspapers at her. "Oh wait-!" She grabs one in the middle, snaps a pair of scissors expertly, and surfaces with another ad which she waves triumphantly. It declares_Job Opening at Scrivenshaft's Pen Shop, Where The Best Pens are Made By Hand!_ The offered position is shelf-stocking. Winky frowns. "There we are," she says. "If you could just take those away and bring me back some…uh…" She looks around for inspiration. "Oh, ah, paper for the typewriter."

"The typewriter you've never used?" Winky says dubiously.

"The very one." Hermione's persistent cheerfulness doesn't waver even when the maid fixes her with a skeptical glare, before sighing and trudging away. The door shuts behind her sharply.

Hermione's smile fades as she looks down at the ad in her hand. The prospect of stocking shelves again does not enthuse her, not even if the alternative is staying here with Tom. But what would she be if the circumstances were different? What would she be? The answer's simple.

She has no idea.

Winky returns, finding Hermione still at the desk and compiling a list of job offers, neatly writing down their addresses, requirements, et cetera. She stuffs paper into the typewriter and sets the remainder on the side, placing one of the many newspapers littering Hermione's bedroom – she picks _Columbia Daily Spectator – _on top to keep it from falling off. "Is there anything else you need?" she inquires.

"Um." Hermione looks around, frowning when she finds nothing. Winky eagerly edges toward the door. "I'm sure there's…something," she mutters. Her eyes suddenly brighten. "Ah, I know, show me how to use the typewriter."

"_I _don't even know how to use that thing." Winky casts a repulsed look at the offending piece of machinery, as if it could sprout wings and a row of venom-covered teeth.

Hermione slumps in her chair. "Drat."

"Why are you so keen on giving me stuff to do anyway?" Winky demands, coming around to the desk and sticking her hands on her pointy hips. Hermione winces guiltily under her withering glare. "I know you and Dobby have been getting friendly, so I assume he ran his mouth and told you about my drinking-" Hermione opens her mouth to protest, but she holds up a hand. "-but I don't care about that," she continues. "I just want you to know I don't appreciate your treating me differently because of that. We can be friends, but you can't be my nanny, Hermione. I'm a grown woman. I make my own decisions."

"I just…" She sighs. "I want to help you."

Winky attempts to keep her stern look in place, but it slips slightly, revealing a slight smile. "Don't be silly, Hermione. Girls like you and me-" She pauses, her voice unconsciously softening. "-we haven't got anybody but ourselves."

Hermione blinks.

Winky clears her throat, seeming to remember her characteristic gruffness. "If there really is nothing for me to do though, I should get back to work. I do have other things to do, you know. This place doesn't clean itself."

Hermione grimaces. "Oh, right. I hadn't thought about that when I…" She starts again, "Is it ok if I still call you for help with things? I like your company."

"If you _must_." Winky sighs dramatically, rolling her eyes. When Hermione doesn't smile, she hesitates before adding, "Does this have anything to do with Mr. Voldemort by any chance?"

"What?" Hermione says, so sharply that Winky's eyes immediately shutter in suspicion. "I-I mean, of course not. He's usually like this, isn't he? I mean, he has to work. Paintings don't…paint themselves, do they?"

Winky cocks a brow, saying nothing.

Hermione turns bright red.

Thankfully, the maid has the grace to change the subject. "So you're looking for work, are you?" she asks, stepping up and peering nosily at the papers scattered across the desk. Hermione nods and frowns at a thought, tapping a fountain pen against her top lip. "Not much luck, I'm guessing."

"Rotten luck," Hermione grumbles.

"I don't suppose you'd be interested in becoming a maid?"

Hermione blinks at Winky, surprised, then horrified. "Oh no, I couldn't possibly-" At Winky's insulted look, she quickly adds, "I mean, of course I don't have anything against the position, but I just couldn't work _here_. That's the thing." She lowers her voice. "I'm trying to get work so I don't…" Here, she stops, cautious as to how much she should tell Winky. She's never trusted anyone except Tom before, and it's clear how ill that turned out.

She doesn't think she knows how to trust anyone at all.

"So you don't…?" Winky prods.

"So I can move out and start a life of my own," Hermione says finally, figuring this is enough to surpass Winky's keen inspection. It seems to be, too, since Winky nods and even smiles a little at her answer.

"I like that. I've always thought independent women are the best kind," Winky comments philosophically. "Much better than snot-nosed housewives with Crisco for brains, anyway."

Hermione grins. "Well, thanks for the offer anyway."

"Actually, I never meant for you to work here," Winky says, absently picking at a loose stitch on the hip of her pleated dress. "I know a friend of mine who just left a house in Manchester. She worked for a very kind family, a little uppity but nice enough – you know the type. Anywho, she's gone into retirement and their looking for a replacement to fill her place. I could always talk to her if you want, put in a good word for you and see if they've found anyone yet. It might be a while though, as mail is slow and she doesn't have a telephone."

There's a beat of silence.

Finally, Hermione speaks, and her voice is sour as curdled milk. "You know, it isn't kind to get my hopes up like that, Winky."

"To get your hopes up?"

"Yes," she repeats, irritated. She grabs a new pen and starts scribbling on her list again. "I really thought you were better than that."

"But I wasn't lying," Winky protests, surprised. "I'm serious, there's a housekeeper opening in Manchester."

Hermione pauses, looking at her through narrowed eyes. "Really?"

"Of course," Winky says. "Why would I make something like that up?"

She stares at her, and the look on her face is paradoxical: a mixture of relief and doubt. "Oh, I'm sorry. I-" She bites her lip. "I thought you were pulling my leg."

"Well, I wasn't. Now do you want the job or not?"

"Of course I want it," Hermione says quickly. "Just, what do I need to do?"

Winky rolls her eyes. "Well, learn how to use a feather duster, for starters-"

"No, no, not for the position," she interrupts, spinning around to face her. "But for you to do this for me. What do you want in return?"

"Nothing, it's just a favor." Winky regards her queerly. "Why do you think I'd want something from you?"

"I just assumed." Hermione's tone is off-hand, but it can't quite hide her confusion. What is she missing? Doesn't everything come at a price, a demand, or from some ulterior motive? Perhaps Winky is only exceptionally generous. "Well, um…thank you."

"You don't need to thank me." The words are uttered so gently she looks up. The pitiful look Winky is giving her, she thinks, seems to understand what is going through her head a little _too _well. It understands her more than anyone should ever understand Hermione Granger.

Despite what she told Winky, Hermione isn't as unaffected by Tom's absence as she claims. After the maid promised to look into the housework position for her, Hermione was quietly glowing for quite a while, but the feeling eventually faded when she realized she didn't have anyone else to share her news with. The room felt large and quiet after Winky had left…and lonely.

Actually, for the past few days, that's how it's generally been. When Winky isn't around, Hermione has nothing to do but shuffle through newspapers she's already read a hundred times over, or walk around the hallways of the mansion searching for entertainment. Twice per day, she stops by the kitchen to say hello to Dobby, and she once even tried to get Kreacher to warm up to her by attempting to strike a conversation (he wouldn't have any of it, apparently having decided long ago to loath her), but for the most part she is very bored. She catches herself missing a certain someone more than once.

And it's not even that Tom is _gone _really_. _In fact, he's right here in the mansion every day, holed up in his art studio. The staff refer to it as a taboo territory_. _She has only been in his studio once, when investigating the identity of her host…but now that she knows what it is, she doesn't dare go there. The secrecy surrounding it suggests that of the sketchbooks Tom used to keep at Wool's. She could look through them, but only when they were finished.

An art studio does not seem like a place where anything remains finished for long.

Also, Tom works in episodes. Winky told her that when he goes into his art studio he stays there for hours and hours – sometimes he doesn't come out until three o' clock in the morning, having his meals sent to him throughout the day and only ever stepping out to use the loo for a minute. She'd said certain things triggered such episodes: a stroke of inspiration, poor sleep, competition. _Competition _sticks with Hermione; it sounds most befitting of Tom, although Winky says he's probably up there because of the upcoming art exhibition next week.

Hermione pulls up the desk chair to the typewriter, sitting down. She fiddles with a knob on the top of the shiny machine, wishing there was some sort of instruction manual someone thought to leave her. Gnawing on her lip, she taps the buttons, but not hard enough to make the contraption do anything. _Me_, _a writer?_ That Tom could even suggest it with a straight face baffles her. What ever gave him that idea? If anything, she used to read, and that's all. What would she possibly write about?

Testing it out, she pushes down one of the shiny buttons. It makes a satisfying _snap _as it crunches out a letter. The _ding _the typewriter makes when it slides the paper up to the next line is even more satisfying.

She stays there, carefully typing for some time.

The fifth dinner alone is the last straw.

After someone clears away her food, Hermione leaves the dining room and goes upstairs – but this time she doesn't stop at the second floor where her bedroom is, but goes onto the third. She follows the same path from a little under three weeks ago, moving through the winding halls and past blown-up photos in grainy black and white, pictures of exotic landscapes she's never seen before and circus people twisted into grotesque positions. It's empty up here at this time, half of the staff having gone home or cleaned this part of the house already. She stops outside the studio.

_Hi Tom. I was just walking by and thought I'd stop in… Do you mind? _No, that's idiotic. He'll see through her in a second. Hermione rolls back on her heels, frustrated. It doesn't feel as if she is entering just any room, however, but a…a chamber of Tom Riddle. A secret, private part of himself that he guards so actively no one but himself is allowed inside it. _Worst come to worst, he'll throw me out, _she reminds herself not so encouragingly. At least, if he does, she can hate him again without restraint, and all will be as it should be. She can realize that _this _– whatever is making her pulse fly so fast, her sleep so awful, her throat choke up – isn't truly missing him at all, but only the dissatisfied sensation of missing human company.

Instead of knocking, she walks inside. The art studio is much as it was when she last saw it, crates of supplies crammed against the walls, finished canvases propped up wherever the law of gravity allows, tarp on the floor, paint and who-knows-what-else splattered everywhere else. She searches the room for the furiously working artist she'd imagined she would find whipping paint at the walls like the hounds of Hell are snapping at his heels, but finds nothing except the balcony on the opposite of the room, doors ajar. Instantly, she knows Tom is there.

Breathing lightly to avoid the fumes of chemicals, Hermione toes around the junk and masterpieces, glancing at the covered ones curiously as she passes them. She reaches the balcony and nudges the door some more, hoping it will creak to alert the lone figure outside to her presence. Of course, it doesn't, seeing as Karma hates all her human foes.

Hermione counts to three in her head, takes a deep breath, and steps outside, clearing her throat loudly. "AHEM."

"What-" Tom jumps like a startled cat, spinning around. He blinks. "Hermione?" He glances past her, as if expecting to find someone else, and frowns when he doesn't. "What are you doing in here?"

"I wanted to see what was keeping you from civilization," she says, striving for casualness as she walks up beside him. There is a safe amount of distance between them, three feet or more, but it still feels like she's standing on the precipice of a towering mountain. She tucks her fingers around the railing.

In her peripherals, Hermione sees Tom arch a brow, but he only turns back to the paramount view spread out in front of them. His arms settle back on the granite railing, the dark hairs on them flecked with paint, shoulders relaxing. Another tiny blot of pigment kisses his cheek like a purple beauty mark. Hermione studies the field of wild flowers below them, barely visible in the moonlight.

"Do you remember Mrs. Cole?" he says suddenly.

She starts, throwing him a disconcerted look. "How couldn't I? She watched over us like a hawk half our lives." In a mutter, she adds, "She despised us."

"Us? Ha!" Tom smirks, tracing a pattern only he can see on the night sky with his finger. Hermione follows the imaginary path up into the stars, wondering if he spotted a constellation, or something only he can see. "More like she despised _me_for never letting her within two feet of you." She scoffs in agreement, and he grins at her. The moon is in his hair, turning the edges blue-black, and his smile is so wide she can see the back row of his even teeth. _Peter Pan's smile. _Her stomach quivers forebodingly and she has to look away before the feeling can process any further, studying a passing ferry in the distance, only noticeable because of the tiny lights embedded in its side.

"She thought I was some sort of demon child."

"You _were_ a demon child."

"That's debatable."

"I beg to differ."

He whispers something unflattering about their possibly deceased matron into the night.

"Don't say that," she reprimands, but can't help the unsaid laughter in her voice. "What would Mrs. Cole do if she heard you?"

"Flog me with a wooden spoon? Her favorite tennis racket?" he guesses. Hermione snorts.

"Precisely."

"Well, with luck that old bat is dead now and no longer torturing poor orphans in downtown London," Tom says with an off-handed callousness that's really no shock coming from him. Hermione starts to make a retort, but is cut off when he continues, in a different tone, "Remember the time I boxed Piotr's ears?"

Hermione's smile falls and goosebumps that have no business in the dead of summer zip down her arms like tiny insects. She rubs at them, shivering. "You mean when you nearly gave him a concussion?"

He nods. "And you remember, of course, how Mrs. Cole asked you what had happened."

"Yes," she says stiltedly. "I lied, because you told me to."

"Tut tut, Hermione." Tom's eyes are admonishing, dancing with the light of a joke he hasn't let her in on yet. "You didn't do it because I wanted you to. You did it because you wanted to protect me, because you liked that I fought for you."

"Don't be ridic-"

"Don't bother denying it_," _he orders, then softens his voice at her flinch. "Don't you recall the time you saw me kissing some girl in the park, Hermione? Don't you remember what you did?"

She glares at him. "'Some girl in the park'? You do know you've kissed a million girls-"

"That isn't an answer to my question."

An impatient huff escapes her. So fast the words are barely comprehensible, she admits, "Yes, I remember. You got mad at me for seeing and you wouldn't talk to me the whole walk back to Wool's until I said I was over it-"

"Yes, yes." He waves a hand dismissively. "But what matters is you _weren't._ You held a grudge against me for days and you tricked Eric Whalley into thinking you had a crush on him in this crazy little scheme to get back at me."

Hermione balks. "T-that's outrageous! I have no idea what you're talking about."

"When we were in the cafeteria for lunch one day," Tom goes on, as if she hadn't spoken, "I was sitting at our usual table, waiting for you. I remember seeing you walk in and go over to Eric for a chat – you didn't look at me once, which of course, made it even worse. And then you kissed his cheek." His eyes pierce her, a reminiscent smirk edging around his lips. "And you knew I was watching. You wanted me to see."

"I don't remember any of this," Hermione whispers, mouth dry. Her brain sifts through the past wildly, frantically, and to her horror, foggy silhouettes of memory begin to take shape in her mind. She and some teenage boy walk outside, stopping when a figure they didn't see before peels himself off the brick wall and grabs the boy's hair without a word, smashing his face into the dirt, then jerking him up and throwing him face-first into the wall with supernatural strength, again, again, again…

"So just like you wanted me to, I got jealous," Tom says lightly. But there's an old rage burning under his words, like a lighter lifted to a half-eaten cigarette. Hermione waits for the conclusion she has already come to. "I cornered Eric in the courtyard at recess and beat him to a pulp; you just cried and watched me. But you took my side when Mrs. Cole came around to break it up, vouched for me, claimed Eric attacked me first and I was only defending myself. And how could she not believe you? You've always been the good one." He smirks. "Besides, you were the only witness. I never had to ask you to do it either... but I know why you did. I've been thinking about it." He turns his body toward her completely, leaning in so close she stiffens at the scent of paint and mint toothpaste, a too-familiar aroma that rolls off his skin like toxins. "It was because you _wanted_ to see me lose it, Hermione," he whispers savagely. "You wanted to see me come undone at a little wriggle of your finger. You knew I couldn't take it when you played with my feelings, and you just loved to mess with me. You had to get your revenge. Always."

Hermione stares at him, a very quiet, tiny defiant gleam in her eye. "And?"

"And I have a theory." Closer he comes. Close enough to have to look down at her to meet her eyes, to make her hold her breath. "You pretend you don't have any part in…this." His fingers lightly touch her side, she tenses. "You've erased every instant where I'm not this terrible monster from your brain, so that I really am a monster to you now. You don't remember all the awful things you've done right beside me, because they've been crossed out of your memory. You don't want to remember the girl you used to be, do you? Because if you do, you'll realize that deep down you're a lot like me." He shakes his head. "And if that's the case, how could you ever live with yourself?"

She purses her lips. "That's just a theory."

"Yes, it is." Tom leans back and oxygen seems to become accessible again. "How does my theory fare though?" he asks.

"It has some validity...but errors, too."

"Such as?"

"For one, I would never break eight of Eric's teeth." He scoffs. "For another thing," she continues, "I haven't erased every memory where you're not abhorrent. Just most of them." With that, she turns to leave, but one last question from Tom stops her.

"Will you come to the art show tomorrow?" he asks.

She looks back at him, surprised. Tom seems tentative, younger somehow, and closer to the version of himself who used to draw her in the park and trace her smiles with his fingertips. Like he didn't understand how she could have so many of them. "I thought I was already going," she says. He blinks.

Then bizarrely, they smile at each other. The too-heavy thunks of her heart start to agitate, and his words chant themselves in her head over and over again, determined not to be forgotten, too important to be lost. _You _wanted _to see me lose it._

And she did. She had wanted to see Tom Riddle break for her with every inch of her soul.

As soon as the elevator doors rattle open, Hermione thinks she knows why Tom never goes to his art shows.

The viewers and critics that hop through the reception area are in formal dresses and snazzy suits, crowding around the pieces that have already been sold, sounding like a great bee hive as they mutter and hum. As they amble along, Hermione learns the art is _abstract expressionism_ (Voldemort's favorite mode, it appears, and a sensational one at that), but to her just means splatters of paint and occasionally, some dots. Bystanders dash frequent glances at Tom when they realize who he is, and especially how fetching. It makes Hermione uncomfortable to stand beside him, like a little girl playing dress-up at an adult party.

"See how boring this is?" Tom murmurs under his breath, although he guides them through the crowd with a permanently pleasant smile. "Look what I would've had to suffer through alone if you hadn't come."

Hermione laughs for the first time tonight, but it's more a nervous reaction than genuine. "Yes, this all looks very dire." She scans the vicinity and meets the black gaze of a nearby photographer's camera as he snaps a shot of them. She blinks at the flash and flushes, unaccustomed to a place where pictures aren't an occasional ceremony but taken almost casually. Tom glares at the cameraman until he gets the message and skitters away to bother some other bystanders.

"Are you alright?" he asks, once the man's gone. His eyes run over her as if they might find some fatal bodily injury, hand lifting as if he'll touch her to check.

"Yes, of course." Hermione frowns at him. They've been getting along well since last night's intervention, and she doesn't want this Pax Romana to end – at least, not yet. She's enjoying having her friend back, even if it's only temporary.

She doesn't indulge the tiny morsel of her that is flattered by his attentions.

Their conversation grinds to a halt when another friend of so-and-so comes up to them; they gloss on plastic smiles the way Cygnus advised her to and Tom already does anyway, while Tom does the introductions. Ah, yes! So nice to meet you Mrs. This-of-that, and you, Mr. That-of-this. Why, they're excellent pieces – your finest, I daresay. Oh, thank you. You know I'm nothing without your generous support, truly…

When there's finally a gap in the terrible, meaningless chatter, Hermione turns to Tom, hissing, "How can you do this all the time? It's so…so…"

"Contemptuous? Artificial?"

"Nauseating," she finishes grimly.

A lady chewing bubble gum floats up to them, backed by a duo of women. One of the women has long blonde hair, tumbling past her waist and extremely garnished. Turnips, garlic cloves, fake jewels, and tulips are braided through her wild tangled locks, setting off a zesty aroma whenever she moves her head. The other woman with them looks younger than the rest – and haughtier. She has dark brown hair wound into an elegant bun and smoky brown eyes Hermione can describe with no other word than sultry. She scans Hermione and smiles mysteriously behind a hand of crimson nails.

"Hermione, _pumpkin_," Pansy exclaims with extreme relief, like they've been searching for each other for centuries and are finally reunited. She glides forward, pecking her on the cheek with lips that smell like strawberry gum. "It's so good to see you again. Look here, I've brought the editor's daughter of _the Quibbler_, just as promised." She winks, turning to Tom, while Hermione quizzically looks past her at the vegetable woman. "Now Voldemort, I hope you do not mind my entourage at your little party. We're only here to look. Cross my heart." A toxic smile crosses her face that instantly convinces one otherwise.

Unimpressed, Tom simply looks at her. "I hope that's the case, Miss Parkinson. The last time you brought-" His dark eyes roam over the tagalongs behind Pansy carefully. -"...friends, I'm afraid you nearly burnt the building down."

Pansy waves a dismissive hand. "Accidents, petty misunderstandings, a little bonfire, blah blah blah. It's all in the past, isn't it?" She smiles at Hermione indulgently. "Hermione, why don't you come along and I'll give you the rounds, introduce you to the big people and all that jazz?"

"Well, I-"

"Well, you what?" Coming forward, Pansy snatches her hand before she can answer, and Hermione reluctantly lets her drag her aside. "Bellatrix?" she inquires, peeking around Hermione's hair. The young woman looks up at them with a disinterest extremely similar to Tom's. Hermione frowns. "Are you coming?"

"No thanks, doll." Bellatrix's voice alone is sex and trouble with a promise, more of a rasp than a tenor. She smirks at Tom, whose intense eyes are on Hermione's hand. She looks down, realizing Pansy's is still clasped around it, and returns his look with a significant one. _We're friends now, _she tries to say with her eyes._ Friends let other people touch them. _In response, his fingers tighten around his champagne glass. The time they spent talking on the balcony last night feels very faraway.

Bellatrix interrupts their moment with a sharp laugh. "Oh, I've got everything I need right here," she says, a hint of an endearing Southern drawl rolling into her raspy voice. "We'll catch y'all later."

_We?_ Pansy smiles back, but is rolling her eyes by the time they turn away. "Art whore," she mutters. Seeing the blonde woman with them start to wander, she snaps to attention, calling "_Luna_!"

Luna stops, raising her eyebrows at them. "Ye-es?"

Pansy sighs, cutting Hermione an exhausted look. "It's like I'm the god-damn babysitter," she sneers under her breath, before marching up to Luna with a brilliant smile. If Hermione wasn't sure before, she is now certain she doesn't like the looks of that curly grin. When she catches up to the two, it's in time to hear Pansy saying, "-so dear, please do keep up. I wouldn't want to lose you."

Luna nods serenely, floating back to her companion's side. As they walk, Pansy blabbers away, pointing out all different critics and popular faces. There's a famous actress in an upcoming moving picture. There's her director - and apparently, he's her belle, too. Here is a washed-up artist. Here is a rising one. Here is the senator and here is his wife; his _mistress _is right over there schmoozing the elevator man…

Try as she might, Hermione can't find the patience to focus on anything that passes Pansy's lips. She watches the pieces of art as they walk by them. Black on white, rolled so it guides your eye and makes you feel small as Alice when she ate the teacake; paint splattered every which way in warm autumn tones, chaotic like a hurricane, dripping up and down the canvas, throwing you into a conundrum that makes your head pound the more you stare, trying to understand-

"Darling!" Pansy's shrill call rips Hermione out of her daze. She's spotted Antonin Dolohov, a rumored double agent from some sort of spy agency in Soviet Russia (aparently, he turned traitor eleven years ago and had been promptly exiled) and at his side, Abraxas Malfoy, who handles Voldemort's finances. Hermione's eyes widen at Malfoy. The sight of him reminds her of her intentions to learn more about Voldemort's...elusive past.

She's about to follow Pansy over so that she might speak to him when she realizes Vegetable Woman is missing. She looks around, just in time to the see the back of her silvery dress trail between a group of drunk old men. _Oh great. _She shoots a glance at Pansy, who seems not to have noticed. Should she say something, or just ignore it and get her information from Malfoy? After a moment of deliberation, she sighs, turns on her heel, and goes after her.

"Hey Luna, wait!" she calls. Luna looks back and blinks at her, not like she's surprised, but as if waking up from a very pleasant dream. "Where are you going?" Hermione asks.

"To see my friends over there." Luna indicates an in-construction exhibit near the back, where a small cluster of people relax around an elegant table setting of drinks and tiny appetizers. "Would you like to come?" she says politely.

"Oh, um, that's alright." Hermione clears her throat. "I don't want to impose-"

"Who are you again?"

She breaks off, staring confusedly at Luna, who stares expectantly back. "Hermione Granger," she says slowly. "A – um – friend of Pansy's."

"I don't like her very much," Luna says, which instantly makes Hermione like her more, "but yes, you can come."

"But I never said-" Hermione begins, then stops because Luna is walking away again. She sighs and follows her.

"Hello everyone," Luna says sagely, once they're standing before the group. The others look up and for a moment, Hermione worries that Luna has confused her 'friends' with some other batch of people when they say nothing. But suddenly, a grin breaks onto a young man's face, pushing up the spectacles he wears and drawing attention to an oddly-shaped scar on his temple – Hermione is shocked when she realizes he is the man from _Flourish & Blotts_ – he waves at Luna.

"Hey Luna." Like Cygnus, he has a Scottish accent. "Who's your friend here?"

"Friend?" Luna echoes, confused, and looks around. Hermione flushes and the rest of the group looks awkward, but also used to this airy, disconnected response from Luna. "Oh. You mean Hermione Granger. Yes, she's quite nice. Very friendly. A little skittish, but overall pleasant."

The group gives a chorus of hellos after another uncomfortable pause and Hermione mutters a greeting back, embarrassed. She looks over her shoulder, hunting the crowd – which has grown by an entire half – for Cygnus or Tom. Neither of them are anywhere in sight. She wonders if Tom is with Bellatrix.

The man in the glasses steps forward, extending a hand and friendly smile. "Hi, Hermione. I'm Harry Potter."

She glances down at his hand, hesitates, and shakes it, although a shiver goes down her spine as she does. The memory of Tom's hard eyes as Pansy guided her away and the knowledge he for some reason dislikes this man is enough to make her pull back quickly though. She looks around to see the others are watching her closely for some unknown reason, like they're expecting a reaction - except for Luna, that is, who is studying a painting and thoughtfully murmuring adjectives in Turkish. She clears her throat.

That seems to snap them out of it.

"Er, well." Harry takes up the task of being the ice-breaker once again. "Hermione…this is Tonks, Lupin, Neville, Seamus, Ginny, and Ron." He points to each person in turn, but they all go by so fast Hermione barely remembers them.

The group admits cursory greetings again, before slowly dissolving back into conversation. Hermione stands there, not willing to go back to Pansy but not quite knowing where to go if she leaves either. She feels eyes on her and raises her head to find the redhead – she thinks his name is Ron – staring at her. His frown deepens and he looks at her harder, blue eyes speculative. Her heart skips a beat. She's about to make a quick getaway when Harry comes over.

"Ron, what are you up to over here?" he says lightly, with a forced laugh and pointed look at his companion that seems to say _Stop being creepy_. "You look like you're trying to do algebra."

Ron goes red from his ears to his neck and mutters something unflattering about Harry's _active duty _under his breath.

"Don't mind him, Hermione," Harry assures her. "He's harmless as a fly."

"Right." She isn't convinced. Ron is back to staring again. She smiles at him tightly, looking away and pretending to search the crowd.

"Sorry," Ron says abruptly, when the awkward silence between the three of them builds. "It's just... I knew a Hermione once and you look _really _familiar." He stares at her hard, as if that will dispel the trance of déja-vu.

"Really?" _That's strange_. Most people have never met anyone with the name Hermione, so to be mistaken for someone else is a surprise to her. She studies Ron back now, puzzled. "I'm sorry, but that can't be possible. I grew up in an orphanage, so we couldn't have met before."

His eyebrows shoot up, perhaps in disappointment, perhaps in disgust. "Oh, I guess not." But the unsaid question lingers in both their eyes: _Do I know you? _Logic says otherwise - there's no way a memorable stranger could be squeezed into the nine years she spent at Wool's Orphanage, after all - but Hermione can't get the feeling of recognition out of her head. And the more she stares at Ron, the more she remembers _something..._

"Harry," Ginny says, appearing at Harry's side. Hermione observes her carrot-orange hair, freckles and blue eyes, looking back at Ron. The two are definitely related, despite the large age difference between them. _Why do they seem so familiar?_"Don't look now, but trouble is coming - and it's got be-otch written all over her."

On cue, all of them turn around - much to Ginny's annoyance - and their eyes fall on Pansy Parkinson, strutting around with her hands lounging coolly on her skirt-fluffed hips. Hermione groans a little too drastically and Harry shoots her a glance, cocking a thumb at Pansy. "Do you know her?" he asks.

_Unfortunately. _"Yes, she's a...friend," she says reluctantly. "I was trying to hide from her."

Ron, who has apparently been eavesdropping, looks amused. "You hide from your friends?"

She blinks. "Well...yes?"

"We'll help hide you," Harry whispers and Ron nods. Before Hermione can even process this, the two men have slid in front of her, forming a barrier between her and Pansy. Astonished, she stares at their backs in shock - and then Pansy's voice suddenly comes through her self-acclaimed invisibility cloaks, distracting her.

"Hello there," Pansy says, cool and impersonal. "Have you seen a pal of mine? Hermione?"

"No," Ron replies shortly. "Haven't even heard of the name, so why don't you keep moving, venom toad? Go scuttle around with Voldemort's other henchmen."

_Venom toad? _Beyond that though, Hermione puzzles over _henchmen_. What the hell does that mean?

"Ha!" Pansy scoffs. "That's almost clever, and I _almost_ actually care what you have to say, except..." She snaps her fingers in inspiration. "Ah, that's right, I don't. So keep your mouth shut and buy a comb for that exploded tomato on your head, why don't you?"

In front of Hermione, Ron goes rigid and clenches his fists. "If you weren't female-" he growls.

"Mr. Potter," Pansy interrupts. Hermione peers around Ron's arm to see her facing Harry, who is stone-faced but has his fists clenched as well. He and Ron look ready for a brawl. "Have you seen a woman with brown hair, a plain dress on? She's a little on the short side and I really do need to find her..."

"No, I haven't seen anyone like that," Harry says stiffly. "But now that you're done here, Pansy, why don't you get going?"

Pansy spares another brief, calculating glance at the lot of them, and gives a curt nod. "Enjoy the show, Mr. Potter...and Mr. Potter's friends." At the end, her thin upper lip curls in a light sneer. She spins in a flourish and strides away, pumps snapping across the polished floors. Hermione scowls after her.

Harry and Ron turn around. Ron still looks red with rage, but Harry seems to have cooled down. Hermione regards them both critically. "You didn't have to do that, you know."

"Yes, but Luna said you're nice, so we did," Harry says, as if that explains anything.

"I _told _you not to look," Ginny grumbles.

"Sorry." He offers her a rueful smile and she blushes to the roots of her hair, much as Ron did when Harry made fun of him. The resemblance between them strikes Hermione again. She wonders what it is that's so utterly familiar about them_._

"Thank you for what you did," she says suddenly. "You really...did me a favor." _That's two favors today, _Hermione thinks, remembering Winky. _And I didn't do anything to deserve them._

Harry and Ron blink at her, surprised, before almost simultaneously bursting into laughter. She stares at them, boggled, and feels a hot rush of indignance - why are they laughing?- but later realizes that she may have accidentally made a joke. Ron straightens to full height, wiping at his eye. "Oh, that's classic, Hermione," he wheezes. "You've got one of the most well-off heiresses trailing around after you like a lost puppy and you want to _get rid of her."_

"Well, she's flaky," she says defensively, which sends both Harry and Ron into another round of hysterics.

"They've had far too much to drink," Ginny mutters.

"Obviously," Tonks pitches in, taking a sip of her own scotch. She runs a hand through cropped navy blue hair and glances over Hermione. "You don't seem like the art type," she observes. "How did a little thing like you come to be here?"

"I'm not," Hermione confesses. "I'm an old friend of Voldemort's, he wanted me to come along."

_That_ brings Harry and Ron's laughter to a grinding halt.

"You mean you're one of _them?" _Ginny says, reeling back and staring at her as if she just grew horns out of her eyeballs. Hermione is afraid the girl might hiss at her. "But you're not even semi-witchlike."

"It explains the affiliation with Parkinson," Tonks whispers to Lupin and Neville, who have somehow joined the audience. They nod in assent. Hermione feels herself go red.

"Sorry?" she says, lost - and a little irritated. "What's going on?"

"Voldemort is Harry's archenemy," Ginny explains. "There's a prophecy and everything."

Harry rolls his eyes. "No, he isn't - and that prophecy was a gag. You know the psychic we saw at that New Year's party was just for kicks."

Ron snickers. "_Trelawney sees all!" _he intones, wriggling his fingers at Harry and hunching his shoulders like an old hag. Harry groans. "_Not one can paint with acrylics while the other uses watercolors..."_

"Why would you two be enemies?" Hermione inquires.

"We're _not_-" Harry starts, but Ron cuts him off.

"Harry is an art prodigy, a rising star, known all over for his work and all, right?" he says, in a way that suggests she should know this already. Hermione nods, surprised but following. "Well, so is Voldemort. Or at least he _was_ the youngest prodigy to make it big until Harry came along three years ago and took his thunder. Anyway, Voldemort is still extremely famous, but it's not enough for him to share the spotlight. Now he's got a huge grudge against him and the two of them are constantly competing for glory, although Harry always denies it. It's like an art war or something."

War? Hermione goes a degree colder inside, because that word perfectly describes what envy and competition can very easily reduce Tom to. She thinks back to what Cygnus said earlier at their arrival, when Tom had complained about their coming here: _There was word that your...competitor might be stopping by tonight. I thought I'd call you in, just in case rumors proved true._

And it seems Harry Potter did show.

"The crowd Voldemort hangs with is always a shifty, stuck-up bunch," Ron goes on, "so that you're one of his friends just threw us for a bit of a loop." He smiles at her bashfully. "Not that you're shifty at all."

Hermione stares at Ron's embarrassed grin, then back into his blue eyes. "I'm sorry if this sounds strange, but do you mind telling me your last name?"

He frowns. "Er, it's Marsh. Why?"

She studies him, frowning, and it suddenly clicks. _Marsh._

"_Thanks, Mrs. Marsh." Hermione puts the two crowns deep inside her satchel and waves to the Marsh family. All six of them are bundled in their homey flat two sizes too small just inside the threshold she now stands on. Five red-headed children shout out their returning goodbyes – Mr. Marsh, who is off in the factory where he works part-time and builds parts for ships, already said his parting an hour past – and Mrs. Marsh, rosy-cheeked and kindly stern as a Mary Poppins, hustles Hermione away, warning her to get going before it goes dark…_

"Ron."

"Ye-es?"

Hermione beams and bounds forward, throwing her arms around his grown-up, lanky frame. "_Ron!"_

"Hermione?"

"Yes, yes," she says excitedly, pulling away. Ron is blushing furiously. "It's me, Hermione. Hermione _Granger._ Don't you remember me? I used to live on Little Hemmingway and I came to your house during the week to clean. Where is everyone? Where's Fred and George and Charlie and Percy and...?" She stops and whirls around, facing Ginny, whose eyebrows shoot up to the hairline at her unrestrained glee. "Gin-gin!"

"Who-who?" Ginny asks, glowering at her.

"Oh my... you're so big. I think you were a baby the last time I saw you," Hermione gushes. She can't believe her luck. Long ago, she had forgotten the Marshs and resigned herself to a part of the past she would never touch again, but now,_somehow..._

"I'm lost," Harry says, scratching the odd scar on his forehead. "You two know each other?"

"From a long time ago," Ron says distantly. He and Hermione look at each other, and he grins.

"Well then, we'll all have to keep in touch so we can get together again." Harry looks between the two of them, deeply amused for some reason Hermione can't fathom - and she suddenly realizes what their staring must look like. She breaks the connection fast, averting her eyes awkwardly. Ron looks away as well, as if he's just realized it too.

Maybe it's time she gets going.

Before she departs, Harry gives Hermione his telephone line and makes sure she promises to call - there's a party downtown they invite her to - she gives her word. Tucking the stationary inside her dress, she walks away, feeling light as whipped cream as she searches for Tom in the procession. _Should I tell him? Or maybe I'll just tell Winky. _She finds Cygnus in the crowd and hurries over to him.

"Cyg," she says when she reaches him. He looks at her sternly, in full curator mode, but surprise flickers in his eyes at her flushed face and ecstatic smile. "Have you seen Tom anywhere?"

"Tom?" He looks briefly confused, but then his face clears. "Oh, you mean Voldemort." He tuts. "I feel as though all you ever do is ask me this question. Why don't we have a deep conversation for once? Why can't we hold a discussion about current events, or some other stimulating subject-?"

"_Cygnus."_

"Oh alright." He purses his lips to one side for a pensive moment. "Last I saw Voldemort, he was with Bellatrix on the balcony outside. Happy?"

Hermione freezes.

A cold, cruel stab of invisible ice water shatters down her back as she remembers the way Bellatrix smiled at her, how she said, _We'll catch up with you later. _She hears herself say, "With Bellatrix?"

"Yes, the crazy cousin I mentioned that one time." He sighs, toying with a lighter in his handkerchief pocket. "She's got quite a crush on him too, so I would keep an eye out if I were you."

"Yeah," she agrees softly, not even bothering to correct his assumption that they're together. Her thoughts are already miles ahead.

_She finally finds Tom in an in-construction exhibit, hidden behind a tarp in an empty corner of the vast showroom. She hurries over, but then slows when she sees he isn't alone._

Hermione strides through the reception at a brisk pace, shouldering aside the observers without apology or pause. She heads toward the balcony, where she can see two doors halfway open, their gauzy curtains aflutter in the late July breeze.

_There's a girl here._

_Hermione freezes, watching Tom and the girl bend and twist messily. The girl is pretty and looks to be a year older than him. She giggles and laughs while they French kiss. Hermione blushes, because she knows Tom kisses other girls - he's told her so – but seeing him do it is another thing entirely, and it makes her feel strange. Like she's on the outside. Like she's been forgotten._

God, she _hates_ to be forgotten.

_Tom opens his sleepy eyes from behind the girl's wavy golden hair and sees her watching. He blinks. She bolts._

She throws back the doors, eyes whipping all around.

_Hurrying away, Hermione curses herself. Why did she have to stay and look? Why did Tom have to see her? Oh, this is so embarrassing…_

_Slapping herself down on the bench, she finds she feels quite put out._

Tom turns around from where he drifts against the iron railing, Bellatrix turning along beside him. "Hermione?" he says, perplexed.

_"You did that on purpose," Tom accuses. "You set me up to fight Eric Whalley."_

_She blinks up at him innocently. "I didn't do anything, Tom."_

_"Yes, you did, damn it." He steps closer, eyes burning with jealous rage, jaw taut. "You know you're mine. Why would you kiss him? Why?"_

_"You kiss other girls."_

_"That's different."_

_"How come?" she challenges._

_"Because it is," he growls. "Now you're going to stay away from Eric, or Mrs. Cole won't be able to stop me from turning him into a corpse next time."_

_Her eyes fill with tears, at his horribleness and the bitter triumph of winning a lost fight. "Do you mean that?"_

_"Yes." He kisses her. His fingers pull at her hair and claw her closer. She holds him as close as she can, laughing inside. Laughing, crying, laughing._

"You're not..." Hermione looks back and forth between the two of them, standing perfectly apart, confused. She clears her throat. "Sorry. I can come back later, if I interrupted..."

"No, that won't be necessary." Tom waves a casual hand at Bellatrix, dismissing her. Bellatrix whispers something in his ear he doesn't react to and strolls past Hermione, sending her a fearsome, twisted smile she isn't sure how to respond to. The door clicks shut behind Bellatrix too gently.

"What's wrong?" Tom asks, eying her carefully.

"Nothing." Hermione makes herself smile, brushing back a curl of hair as if she doesn't have a worry in the world. Her heart pounds out her relief though, the relief she doesn't understand at all. "Um…are you ready to go?"

He rolls his eyes. "I've been ready to leave since we got here."

"Oh, good." She nods, probably too quickly judging by the suspicious look he gives her. She presses a hand to the pulse leaping in her neck, sucking in a gust of air. "Um, I'll be down in the car, whenever you're ready. Excuse me." She breaks away before he can stop her, rushing through the din inside to the elevator. The doors are about to shut when she runs up to them, flagging down the elevator man. He slides the doors and grate back open with a heavy sigh.

Hermione rides down with a group of strangers, thinking of the jealousy – there's no use denying what it is – she felt when she bursts onto the balcony, and how ridiculously relieved she was to see them standing feet apart. _Thank God, _a part of her still keens, _thank God, thank God. _She doesn't know what she would've done if she saw Bellatrix's arms locked around Tom's neck. Maybe broken them off and fed them to her?

They hit the main floor.

Hermione goes outside and the chauffeur brings around the car, summoning the private driver from where he stands at a Greek cuisine stand chatting with the vendor. She packs herself inside it, smelling the gasoline and new leather, trying not to think about what just happened. Hoping Tom will have forgotten all about it by the time he gets in the car.

Of course, he hasn't.

When Tom gets in, he doesn't say anything until they start driving. Then he leans forward, slides up the divider between them and the driver the rest of the way, and faces her. He looks furious, judging by the reflection of his cold, fine-boned features in the window. Hermione stares at that instead of the real him. She doesn't trust herself to look at the real Tom Riddle.

"You think I have a fling with Bellatrix Lestrange," he says flatly.

Hermione pauses. "Well, I _thought _you did." She glances at his reflection again, before rolling over in the leather seat to face him. He glares down at her. "Judging by your tone now, however…" She stops, realizing something. "Who told you that?"

"Black," he says curtly. Hermione feels briefly betrayed by the ease with which Cygnus turned her in, but remembers what Ron said about Voldemort's henchmen. Her mouth tightens. "But that doesn't matter, what matters is that you _do _feel for me, you feel something, I knew it-" He reaches for her, scowling in aggravation when she scoots back. Face twisting, his fingers curl into a taut white fist.

"Why-" He pauses, lowering his fist and gently, gently knocking it against the window, although every corded muscle in his body tells him to shatter it. "_Why_," he hisses, "would you think that I'd ever have an interest in Bellatrix, of all people? In anyone? Haven't I made my feelings clear?"

"Well." She swallows. "You can hardly blame me after all the stunts you pulled when we were kids."

"Yes, when we were kids, but we're not kids anymore, Hermione. I don't care about Bellatrix, or any of them," he says with conviction. "They're all nothing to me, less than nothing. What can I do to make you see that?"

"I…" Hermione begins. _I want you to never so much as look at that bat Bellatrix again, to know that you're mine, to remember how I can make you want me. I want you, I want you, I want you like the moon wants the sun and the dark wants the light. _"You can't," she chokes out. "I'm always going to be afraid of you."

He rubs his forehead. "Don't be-"

"I wish I wasn't." She breathes out, digging her fingers into the seat to steel herself for what comes next. The backs of her eyes sting. "I hate you for making me feel this way."

Tom looks at her. Just looks. "Have you always hated me?" he says at last, his voice soft and tremulous. "Truly?"

"_Do you really hate me?" Tom says at last._

"_No." Hermione wipes her raw eyes on her sleeve, looking over at him. He looks scared._

Her voice cracks. "Yes."

Tom goes stiff. His proud shoulders curve inward, his round boy nails pinch into his palms, and he's taut as a pulled arrow for a moment, ready to explode into black rage - but then the hard edges start to fuzz and the rigid muscles slide, until he's nothing but a boy staring blankly out the window.

"I'm sorry." _Sorry for lying to you again._

Tom doesn't reply. He's turned away from her, but she can see his chest breathe slowly, the Adam's apple in his throat slide. He struggles to stifle the emotions, to be cold and empty, but cannot manage this once. The angel eyes whir at the passing buildings outside, eyelashes beating frantically, and there's.._.something _that fills Hermione with utter horror_. _Something rolling down his cheek, some inhuman sound clawing out of his mouth before he bites his lip fast, some intense pain she can't take seeing trying to destroy him from the inside out. She wants to escape, but she can't throw open the door and roll herself into the street… even if it is preferable to this.

Tom Riddle never cries. Not when he was a baby, not when he slipped on a mop and fell down three flights of stairs, dislocating his shoulder when he was six. Not ever.

So how can he possibly cry now?

"Tom, I..." she whispers, but it's too late. She's pushed too far. She's been too cruel. She's hurt him, just as she's always wanted to do since the night he hurt her the worst, six years ago. She is victor. She has finally got her revenge.

So deep down, she supposes, she is a lot like him.

Except she's worse.


	13. Chapter 13

Typewriters don't speak.

They don't speak, they don't titter, and they certainly don't do anything except squat down on a desk and look intimidating. Nonetheless, the typewriter sneers at Hermione, scoffing a curt _snap! _at each letter, snorting its scornful _ding _when she emerges onto the next line, coughing thirstily when it's time for a new sheet. _Stupid, stupid, stupid! _is all Hermione writes at first, again and again in bold, unfeeling print. It makes her feel no better, so she moves onto new words, like _childish, manipulative, foolish, deceitful, real, faux, sneaky contrivances, pitiful, miserable, empty, monster, hard-hearted, lonely, confused. _The list goes on, until it's so unbearably sweet and tragic it resembles a letter a wife sends to her war hero.

Balled-up scraps litter the floor of the bedroom, the least salvaged of them shredded irreversibly and hastily scribbled out. When Hermione crawls into bed, the joints in her fingers ache, but they do nothing for the hurricane in her head. She goes to bed, but only for moments, waking back up sweating and breathless. How can she sleep after all she said? When she closes her eyes, she sees the hope in Tom's eyes, replaced swiftly by disappointment, fury, the sheen of...

_Trick! _her instincts bellow. _Another one of his ploys to get to you._

When they'd finally arrived at the mansion, Tom hadn't even waited for the car to stop, unlocking the door and hauling himself out when it had barely slowed down, as if he couldn't get away from her fast enough, as if he'd rather face a concussion than share the same air for another second. But how does she fix it? Can something like that be fixed at all? She tells herself she said those nasty things because it's better for the both of them. Tom hates her, she hates him, and when they part, they part bitter enemies determined never to cross paths again. She's off the hook. He's out of her life.

Hermione's breaths slow into her damp pillow, shooing away the last of conscious thought.

The first strange thing Hermione notices is that all of the windows are wide open.

It's the dead of night. She walks out of her bedroom and down the floor, moving so slowly and soundlessly she wonders briefly if she's transformed into a phantom over the night. There's a summer lightning storm outside and it flashes strawberry-yellow, illuminating the vast hallway she stands in and making the velvet drapes whip with a gust of ferocious wind. The second strange thing are the sharpened claws dragging over the floorboards, rasping hoarsely as they draw closer...

She watches the claws, heart lurching terrifically when their curled tips peel up wood and slash across the curtain closest to her, a split-second before ribboning her chest. Pain flowers under her skin like a poison blossom and she falls. And the lightning flashes. And there's Tom.

He stands on the other end of the hallway, hands tucked in the pockets of another ivory-white suit, gazing out one of the windows with his chin propped on his fist. Oh, he's dashing, and the smile he sports is wry. A moment later he looks up, surprised to see her. "What's wrong, baby?" he says, and his voice echoes all around the mansion, sliding down the banisters and oozing out of the melting walls. She shudders. "You look a fright."

"The claws were here again." She lets go of her chest, where they tore her open like an envelope, and gestures sadly to the blood. "They won't leave my dreams alone."

"Dreams?" Tom repeats curiously, staring at his red hands and long nails, filed into fine, sharp points. His expression grows feral. "But I thought this was a nightmare."

"Maybe." She eyes him and feels hungry when he prowls toward her, in that lazy, self-confident gait of his. He pulls her to her feet and puts his mouth on hers, smoking it like a cigarette. She sneaks her hands under his cream vest for a swipe of skin. She wants to devour, to feast on his tongue.

"Don't forget to try," he whispers. Outside the windows, the sky flashes electric raspberry-blue. The floors shudder and groan, about to give. "Don't forget a thing."

"Eat me," she says in reply. "Don't leave a bone behind."

He laughs and she laughs, and the mansion laughs, and the pipe-organ squeals as it explodes, blowing off their faces...

And Hermione wakes up.

She finds the same canopy she always wake up to, still above her, and she scrabbles a hand over the pounding organ in her chest. _Not again, _she thinks, rubbing her exhausted eyes. This is the fourth nightmare of the night. It can't be any later than three-thirty in the morning.

Sighing, she sits up and swings her feet over the side of the bed, searching in the dark for the lamp. She finds it and pulls the cord, pupils shrinking to adapt to the light. She stares around the bedroom she has recently been able to call hers and doesn't see one sign of claws, just tiny white balls everywhere. What the…? _Oh right_, she remembers, eyes landing on her cynical typewriter. _The writing. The fight._

She remembers the time Tom read the entire _Wuthering Heights _book to her when she was sick, how she was only awake to hear the first two pages.

Suddenly determined, Hermione stands and finds a robe, throwing it on over her pajamas and fastening it as she walks down the hall. None of the windows are flung open like they were in her dream and she's glad, because she feels disturbed enough. She realizes she doesn't know where Tom's bedroom is, she's only been to his studio and she doubts even _he_ is there at this hour.

She stops, looks around, and realizes she's completely lost.

"Damn it," she mutters. Perhaps Kreacher stayed behind and will find her?

The thought alone sends her walking again, at a faster, brisker pace.

Hermione passes through winding hallways inlaid with marble flooring and ceilings far too high above her head. She tries every doorknob she finds, but most of them are locked and the ones that aren't only lead to empty recreation rooms, like a piano room or the indoor pool. She huffs, frustrated.

"Looking for something?" a voice asks.

She turns around slowly and regards Tom, leaning against the threshold of an open door she tried jiggling the handle of to no avail two minutes ago. He isn't smirking or taunting or any of things Tom Riddle normally is. Hermione takes a deep breath.

"Yes, I-" She hesitates, fiddling with the knot of her sash. "Can I speak to you for a moment?"

Where Tom would usually say, _I thought you were already doing a fine job of that, _he only nods and steps back. Hermione barely takes in his bedroom as she enters, the larger part of her focus divided on its owner. The lights are all on inside, dim and yellow, and the sheets on the bed are untouched. _Maybe I'm not the only one having trouble with sleep, _she thinks.

Distracting her from her thoughts, Tom shuts the door, moving past her to sit down in a rocking chair on the opposite side of the room. For once, the distance between them doesn't put Hermione at ease – it just makes everything that happened last night seem more real, and worse.

"I'm sorry if I woke you," she says, although it's obvious he hasn't slept much more than she has. Tom says nothing, doesn't even look at her. Hermione flushes. "But I...I had a bad dream," she goes on timidly. "I guess it was an old habit to come here."

"Oh?" Tom's tone belies no interest.

"Yes." She makes herself smile, although the motion hurts her stiff cheeks. Copying what he said two nights ago, she asks, "Do you remember the time I came to your dorm at Wool's, demanding you let me sleep there for the night?"

Waiting, she watches Tom as he scratches gouges into the wooden armrest with a fingernail for an endless minute, before finally nodding.

"Well," she says, on a sharp exhale of relief, "I can't help comparing that time to now. There I was – what? Twelve? – and still too chicken to sleep by myself after a bad dream. So down I went to the second floor, to your room, and I knocked on your door…"

_"Get out of here, Hermione, before you get us both in trouble," Tom hisses._

_"But I can't sleep," Hermione says in frustration, fisting the blanket she's brought and shaking it at him. "Why can't I sleep with you? You always come to my room whenever you want."_

"_It's different."_

_"No, it's not!"_

_Tom rolls his eyes. "Of course it is. I can do whatever I want. Now go to your room."_

_"Just because you're a year older than me doesn't mean you can boss me around, you idiot."_

_He narrows his eyes at her. She narrows hers right back._

_"Fine." Tom shoves open the door and jerks his chin at his dorm, looking irritated. Hermione grins. "Get in here," he commands, "but be quiet."_

_"Thanks." She jumps up before she passes him, struggling to reach the height of his new thirteen-year old body, but after a few hops manages to place a kiss on his cheek. He smirks a little and shuts the door behind them._

_"So what do you want to do?" she says excitedly, laying down her blanket next to his messed up one and smoothing out the wrinkles. She didn't bother bringing her pillow, so they'll have to share, but secretly she planned for that. "We can read a book or play sticks or-"_

_"_I _am going to sleep," Tom interrupts importantly. He smacks himself down in the bed beside her, jostling the cheap mattress and her neatly made sheet. She scowls at him. "You can do whatever you want so long as you're quiet."_

_"Bore," she accuses._

_His black eyes slant in the semi-dark, either with pride or sleep. "I am not."_

_"Are too."_

_"Don't be childish, Hermione," he tells her imperiously. "Now I'm going to sleep. When I wake up, you better be gone or else Mrs. Cole will throw the both of us out of the orphanage and it'll be no one's fault but your own."_

_He turns over, tugs up the blanket to shield his eyes from the streetlight coming in through the window, and ignores her._

_Hermione sits for a minute or two, deflated, and she peeks over at Tom to see if he'll reconsider the game proposal. But he's fast asleep, pretty pink lips pouted out and girl lashes clustered like dream braids. She sighs and crawls over, snuggling up against his back. His chest goes up and down slowly under their thin cotton blankets. She puts her arm around him in a half-hug and admires his beauty for a private moment, relishing that he's all hers. Because although he may say otherwise and kiss stupid blondes behind Mrs. Cole's back, she knows he belongs to her. He loves her the most. She's the only girl he ever really loves._

_"Why're you staring at me?" grumbles Tom, startling her._

_"I thought you were sleeping," she accuses in an angry whisper. He snickers._

_"Well, you were wrong, weren't you?"_

_"Go to bed, Tom."_

_"Only if you do too." And he flips around, slipping his arm around her just as she's done to him. He yawns and his fingers play at the bottom of her back underneath the nightgown, inching higher. "Do you need me to rub your back or can you fall asleep on your own?"_

_"No, I'm not a little kid anymore," she snaps, and he shrugs._

_After a moment, she adds, "But could you rub my back? It's nice."_

_He grins._

"You were really sweet," Hermione says softly. "When you wanted to be."

A neat collection of wood shavings sits by Tom's hand. With a flick of his wrist, he sweeps them to the ground. "Your point?" he demands, raising his head and looking at her for the first time since she set foot in the room. She doesn't flinch from his gaze, hard and cold as the child who only ever spared a smile for her. Maybe he hadn't cared for her in the way she wanted him to…but he did care for her in his own way, in the only way he knew how. She'd had parents to teach her how to love for a little while, but Tom? A stern matron, a grey orphanage, a cloudy past. All he knew – all he _does _know is how to get what he wants through whatever means necessary.

Hermione should have taught him to care the proper way, but she'd been so young, so scared... Older and wiser, she might still have had chance at helping Tom, if not for last night when he reached out to her and she threw it back in his face out of spite. For so long, she's told herself that _he _is the twisted one, preying on her as a helpless child, torturing her for sport. It was not her in the wrong, but _him._

Bitterness planted all those misconceptions in her mind. Now, she brushes them away like old cobwebs, tentatively making room for something else.

"I want my friend back," she says.

Tom laughs at her, lips twisted in an ugly sneer. "Why the sudden change of heart?" he mocks. "I thought you hated me. Or do your words not mean much anymore?"

Hermione ignores his attempt to provoke her. "Listen to me, Tom, please." She crosses the room and he stiffens when she plants her hands on the chair armrests, putting her face in his. "I meant what I said last night, when I said it," she says, "but I've been thinking and… I don't want things to end like this. I don't want you to go through the rest of your life thinking no one's ever...cared about you, because it's not true. _I _used to." Her voice drops, to hide the roughness. "At least, once."

Tom looks away from her, jaw taut. "You're lying."

"Don't tell me that," she hisses, with such ferocity he looks at her in surprise. "You aren't my jurisdiction, you never were supposed to be. You were meant to be my _friend, _someone who cared, listened – _not _someone who controlled me-" She breaks off, catching a breath. "That's not what I wanted to tell you though. I…I don't want to fight. I just-"

Tom gazes at her as she searches for words, frustrated. "You want to be friends?" he finishes.

"Yes!"

"No."

As Hermione stares at him, he drops his gaze and says in a low, gritty tone she's never heard from him before, "You can't honestly expect that of me, Hermione. You must know friendship is something I haven't had in mind for you since I was eleven. Honestly, that you could even _entertain_ that thought-"

"But I can," she interrupts, cupping his cheek. The suddenness of the movement and unexpected touch are so unprecedented that Tom _and_ Hermione's eyes widen in shock – how funny to think that once upon a time they touched often as they breathed. And unless her senses deceive her, Tom's eyes darken.

Determined not to be deterred, she presses, "I want this. For once in your life, Tom, give someone else what they want. Give _me_ what I want."

Tom doesn't answer at first. His eyes drop to the hand holding his face so gently, eyelashes brushing her index finger, almost caressing it. It would be so easy to kiss him, Hermione thinks, but stays still, waiting. If he agrees, he's got a chance. If he agrees, _she _has a chance at teaching the beast how to look beyond his own motives and gain.

_Come on, Tom._

"I could just make you," he finally says, so softly she barely hears him. Hermione's heart misses a beat. "I could make you stay..." A little, twisted smile moves his lips. "I could make you mine."

"...I know." She searches his face, seeing the indecision there, the temptation to simply take what he wants instead of working for it. "But what you could do and what you ought to do are very different things."

"What _should_ I do?" he asks, arching a brow.

"You should consider this your last chance," Hermione says firmly. "You should walk me to my room and lie with me in bed..." She swallows thickly, glancing down. "To keep the nightmares away. We'll just sleep, because it will be enough to be near each other, and when we wake up we'll have the whole day to laugh and get on each other's nerves and do whatever the hell it is friends are...are supposed to do." She squeezes his hand, which she grabbed onto somewhere during her speech. "Ok?"

Tom is looking at her strangely. "You're serious?"

"Utterly."

"And if I can't do that?"

She shakes her head, adamant. "Oh no, you'll do it. I'll make sure you do."

He stares at her for a moment - confounded, she thinks, or maybe just suspicious - before he finally seems to relent. Haltingly, he says, "So I...walk you to your room, you say?"

"Yes." Hermione stands back when Tom gets up, stuffing her hands in her robe pockets while she watches him. Wondering if she's making the stupidest mistake she possibly could by doing this. "Then," she adds, trying to lighten the mood, "we go to bed because you're such a grouch when you're sleepy."

"Oh, because you're pure sunshine in the morning, huh?" he scoffs back.

She grins. "Of course I am."

They go back to her bedroom, going in to find she left all the lights on and an avalanche of balled-up papers littering the floor. Tom raises both brows at the mess and Hermione flushes, explaining, "I've been using the typewriter."

"I see." He bends down, plucking up a ball and opening it. "_Nothing is-"_

"Don't read that!" Hermione bats it out of his hand, where it rejoins its rejected friends at their feet. Tom's lips curl at the corners and she clears her throat, clearing a path toward the bed. "I just do it to pass the time," she says sternly. "It's nothing serious."

"Of course," he agrees, but there's a suspicious glint in his eye.

Hermione undoes her robe and casts it aside, smoothing her pajamas before carefully climbing into bed. There are over twenty-seven pillows, but she throws most of them aside and puts her head on the one that feels least like a rock. Tom watches her for a moment before moving to the bed stand and switching off the light. Once they're plunged into darkness, Hermione's chest constricts with anxiety before the bed shifts as he climbs in beside her. A mental map of Tom's body the last time she was in such close quarters with it draws up in her head: his legs are slightly longer now and his body is thicker from the diet of a handsomely-fed young man, although still willowy as a birch tree. She feels the heat of his hand as it pauses over her waist, then moves down and finds her hand, closing around it.

She releases a tense breath, glad it's dark so he can't see her.

Hermione has just closed her eyes when Tom shifts, making the bed creak as he resettles his head beside hers – or at least that's where she estimates he is, judging by the even breaths on her hair. "Are you sleeping?" he asks quietly.

"No." She turns her face toward his voice. "I'm wide awake."

"What were the dreams about?" he says.

"I don't really remember."

"And the truth?"

She hesitates, but only for a second. "I keep dreaming that your house is haunted."

The bed tremors with laughter.

"Don't laugh at me," she says, scowling, but she's laughing too. "It's scary!"

"It's ridiculous." He does stop snickering, however, and asks, "Wide awake, you say?"

"Wide awake."

"I could read you a story, to help you sleep," he finally says. "If you'd like."

"Um... sure. Alright."

"Ok, I'll just… I'll be right back."

Tom shoves back the sheets, sitting up and throwing his legs over the side of the bed. He doesn't leave though, his hand hesitating to let go of hers. Hermione understand his wariness. Half of this feels like a dream to her, too, as if she'll wake up and none of it will have ever happened outside her head. "I'll wait here," she whispers into the silence, as reassuringly as she can.

She imagines Tom nods as he gets up, footsteps padding across the room before the door quietly opens and shuts. She imagines him pacing to the library down the hall, searching the shelves for a book he remembers they used to read together, trying to decide what to make of their situation, shoving his hands through his hair like he always does when he gets frustrated, comparing this and that book and putting them back, one at a time…

The next thing she knows, she's out like a light.

* * *

The blinding daylight is the first thing Hermione wakes up to. She opens her eyes and cringes, squeezing them shut again against the screaming sunlight. _Ugh. Who opened the blinds? _She starts to sit up, then freezes when somebody mutters and fidgets beside her. Looking over to her right, she finds Tom, with a pillow smashed over his head with one arm – he must have put it there earlier to ward off the on-slaughter of light – and his mouth drooping open, a tiny ongoing snore rumbling in his throat. A book, _Collected Poems of John Keats, _sits on the bed stand next to the lamp. She blinks, realizing she fell asleep before he even came back last night.

Did last night actually happen?

Before Hermione can even let herself regret it, or think all of the pros and cons through thoroughly, it occurs to her that Tom is a light sleeper. It's a random thought, dug up by the déja-vu of seeing him drooling on a pillow, but it instantly stops any of her doubts in their tracks. For a moment, she studies him.

Tom's nose is half-buried in the pillow, his eyes squeezed shut and black brows furrowed not as if he's peaceful, but thinking hard about something distressing. The skin of his forehead has the tiniest wrinkle, bunching between his eyes and into the bridge of his nose, which smoothes out into high cheekbones and a tiny beauty mark near the corner of his jaw. His mouth, hanging open for the world to see, makes her want to laugh out loud and kiss him at once.

Abruptly, Hermione rolls away, taking a sharp breath to clear her head. This has to work. They will be friends. _Friends. _She'll tuck away her desire for him in a secret, tiny place where no one can find it, and show him what real, selfless, unlimited _caring_ looks like. She can prove to them both that the past can be corrected. The past isn't what she always thought it was. She can make him better, and therefore, make herself better.

She looks back at Tom, a longing reverberating in her chest so deeply it feels like a gong. Then she heaves herself to her feet and starts to get ready.

* * *

"Hermione! Come here, quick," Winky commands, beckoning the young woman into the warm hearth of the kitchen. The warring scents of rich fondues and homemade baguettes engulf Hermione as soon as she steps inside, waving to Dobby, who is busy instructing two new hires how to prepare the pot roast. Winky rests her hip against the sinks – her station, presumably – and waits impatiently until Hermione stands next to her.

"I've got news," she says. "Good news."

Hermione's eyes widen. "You got me the job-?" she begins, but before she can finish, Winky is shaking her head vehemently, correcting, "No, no, but I _do _have an interview for you. The family I talked about before, they want a new maid, and I told them you're looking for work and have plenty of experience cleaning for families – so you'll just have to fib a little, but I'm sure that will be no problem. You're a bright girl, aren't ch'ya? Anyway, they're expecting you later today."

"Of course, um, alright, yes." Hermione bobs her head furiously. Hungrily, she asks, "Who is the family? Do they have children? Tell me about them."

"It's a normal-sized family, and they're a merry bunch," Winky reports. "Their surname is _Bones. _There's George Bones, his wife Amelia, and their four children (although they're all grown-up and married now). But Mrs. Bones' niece, Susan, lives with them, and she's about sixteen, I think. They're devout Christians, so prepare to exercise your faith there… They're well off though, since both the Bones work for the government, so you'll make good gravy."

"Gravy?" Hermione repeats vacantly.

"Easy money," Winky translates, with a perky wink. Her cheeks are flushed and she's a little more cheerful than usual, which means she's had her fair share of liquor today. Hermione pretends not to notice the stench of whiskey on her breath.

"And they live in Manchester," she tacks on, recalling what Winky told her before. "How far is that from here? Which bureau is it in?"

"Which bureau?" Winky laughs loudly, like she said something funny, and Hermione frowns at her. Composing herself, the maid pats her hand sympathetically. "Sorry, Hermione, I forget you're not from around here sometimes, even with that funny accent of yours. Manchester is in another state, hon, in Massachusetts." She frowns, ticking off the numbers on her fingers. "That's about…say…three and a half, four hours away by car."

Her jaw drops. "Four hours?"

"At the most," Winky assures, patting her hand comfortingly. Someone shouts at her to get going on the dishes. Scowling, she shouts back at them _to mind your own damn business!_ Turning back to Hermione with an apologetic sigh, she says, "It's probably time you go. Head out around noon and have one of Mr. Voldemort's private drivers take you up; no sense in wasting money on a train ticket when you have a whole cabbie service at your beck and call right here, huh?"

"Right," Hermione agrees, but she barely hears her. She leaves the kitchen, feeling dazed and dizzy, faintly astounded. _I've got an interview. The job has good pay, kind people that will put a roof over my head, and it's…four hours away from here. _She tells herself she's only disappointed because she likes New York so much: the restless city, the sight of new people everyday, the strangely beautiful buildings, some of them so bleak they look like they're made out of metal, but others hundreds of years old, made of granite and wrought with breathtaking architecture and fierce gargoyles that look over you as if they're watching your back… but that's only a small part of it, in truth.

Because while half of her is raving about her new job position, the other thinks, _what about Tom?_

She shakes the thought away. There will be time for visits. If an opportunity presents itself to her, she should take advantage of it, especially after all this time. Besides, she always knew this wouldn't last forever. She can't live off Tom's money for the rest of her life – nor does she want to.

Putting on a smile, Hermione feels quite excited by this new development. She goes upstairs to change.

* * *

_Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget_

_What thou among the leaves hast never known,_

_The weariness, the fever, and the fret_

_Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;_

_Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,_

_Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;_

_Where but to think is to be full of sorrow_

_And leaden-eyed despairs;_

_Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,_

_Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow._

The car bumps over a fork in the road, jostling the book out of Hermione's hands to the floor. She squeaks and scrambles for it, snatching it up before the mud from her rain boots can ruin it. The half-bent pages of _Ode to a Nightingale _stare up at her, but there's no time to finish them as the driver announces they've arrived at their destination.

Lifting her head, Hermione peers out of the window at the quaint country home that is the Bones residence. Whereas in New York it had been raining when she left, here in Manhattan it's cool and limpid. They passed endless fields of green, and through one or two old-fashioned towns from the colonial days during the long drive (an approximate three hours and twenty-nine minutes), but Hermione spent most of it entrenched in the book she and Tom were meant to read last night. Tom gave it to her before she left, ducking into the open door of the car in the boisterous rain to tell her to keep busy during the trip.

She's still surprised he didn't put up a fight when she told him about the interview. She'd half-thought he would try to keep her from going.

But he hadn't. Why?

_Am I disappointed that he didn't? _Hermione admits to herself, that maybe – _maybe _– she was disappointed before, but now that she is here and sitting in the Bones' living room, awaiting her interview, how could she be? Paranoid, she glances down at her outfit and weeds a tiny spec off the seamless dress. It's short-sleeved with a respectably open collar and a jaunty skirt. She gazes past it and turns beet-red at the horrific sight of her boots. They're covered in mud! Blast!

Muttering to herself, she rises and starts searching for the loo. She goes back to the entrance hall, where the kind butler received her, and spies one beyond a door. As she passes it, voices murmur from within, and she realizes the door is barely open. She hurries past it, but freezes when a woman sharply cries, "_Susan!"_

"_Well, it's true. You heard what that woman said-"_

"_It's our Christian duty not to assume opinions about others before we can judge them ourselves."_

"_I know, Ant Amelia." _Susan sounds exasperated. _"But isn't it also a sin to union before marriage? And worse, to conceive a child!"_

"_No one ever said anything about that," _Mrs. Bones warily replies after a beat.

Realizing she is probably hearing a conversation she shouldn't, Hermione starts to edge back the way she came, but stops at the next exclamation.

"…_probably stole from her last employer," _Susan is fuming when she tunes back in. Her eyes widen. _"You know about people like that, you know what that little tramp is here for. She wants to steal from us, too."_

"_Well, what am I supposed to do?"_

"_Tell her we found somebody else."_

"_Only ungodly women lie."_

"_Then tell her to get the hell off our property."_

"_Susan, mind your tone when you speak to me." _But the reprimand is half-hearted, an empty threat next to Mrs. Bones' next speculation. _"What a shame to fall so hard, to be so diverted from His guidance. If only we could save her…"_

"_There's no saving trash," _replies Susan firmly. _"Did you see her when she came in? Looks like she came off a barn. She probably tore her dress right off some poor woman's back before she got here – you can smell the dirt on her, the greedy desperation of a poor, slimy little Satan lover-"_

"Excuse me." Hermione meets the shocked gazes of the women, staring at her in astonishment. The shorter, younger one, glances over her, and her nostrils flare in disgust at the sight of her dirty boots. Hermione looks back and forth between the two of them, swallowing. "I apologize, I thought this was the bathroom," she says stiffly. "Have I interrupted something?"

"No, nothing, dear," begins Mrs. Bones hastily, but Susan cuts her off, facing Hermione with squared shoulders and a set jaw.

"The position is no longer available, Ms. Granger," she states. "We're sorry we made you come out all this way for nothing."

Hermione clenches her jaw. "I don't understand. I thought I was invited here for an interview-"

"Yes, well you thought wrong," Susan interrupts, cheeks flushing an ugly red. "We thought you were somebody else. As I said before, we apologize."

Hermione opens her mouth to make a retort, but stops when she sees Mrs. Bones looking at her with unmistakable pity in her eyes - and there's not only pity, but thinly-veiled contempt. _Why? _she thinks, desperate to find out what she did wrong._I didn't do anything to these people, I didn't do anything at all. What happened?_

She doesn't know, but whatever _has _been done to make them hate her so much can't be fixed.

"Of course," she finally says after a minute. "I understand completely."

"You do-?" Susan begins, surprised, but Mrs. Bones quickly interjects.

"Thank you for being so understanding, Ms. Granger," she says with a wide smile, stepping forward as if to shake her hand, but just making a shooing motion at her instead. "God bless you, and let our Savior provide you with a safe ride back home, darling." _And not let you crawl back here, _the rest of her too-large smile seems to say.

On her way out, Hermione stops only to collect her hat from the living room, holding her shoulders straight as she walks back to the car waiting for her at the mouth of the smooth driveway. The eyes of Mrs. Bones and her niece are like burning sunbeams on the back of her head. In the car, she raises the divider and watches the rolling countryside that seemed so cheery an hour ago, seeming to mock her with its bright perfection. There's a terrible burning in her chest and throat, like someone smeared rubbing alcohol on her internal organs. Bewilderment fills her head, but quick to replace it is anger, then hurt.

She takes one deep breath, then another.

_You heard what that woman said._

It can't be anyone else. Winky knows she's an orphan, she knows where she comes from. Hermione had confided in her, she'd _trusted _her – and what did she get for trusting a drunk? Betrayal. Repulsion and hatred from rich snobs she doesn't even know. _You can smell the dirt on her, _they'd said. The dirt! A laugh bubbles out of her, choked off by a snort. _Stupid, stupid, Hermione,_ she imagines Susan Bones saying. _When_ _will you learn? _She'd been so pleasantly surprised by Winky's apparent generosity when the maid offered to help her that she'd forgotten to question her motives, had forgotten the real world isn't as nice as it appears to be. Hermione curls up on the seat, trying to deny the hurt. What did Winky tell them? She decides that she'd rather not know, recalling the terrible things she heard the Bones saying about her.

She just wants to go back to New York and forget all about this. The whole trip has been a waste of time, a big lousy disappointment.

Maybe it's better if she just stays with Tom for a while.


End file.
